05/25 - 08/10/24
We are proud to present "The Donkey is Tired," a retrospective of Gerben Mulder at NONADA ZN curated by Luiz Zerbini and Paulo Azeco, in partnership with Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel. Opening on May 25, the exhibition brings together paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the artist's last 20 years of work.
Mulder, a Dutch artist who lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, is presenting a panoramic view of his work for the first time in the city. The artist explores flowers, human figures, and animals as starting points for his dreamlike paintings filled with erotic energy. In fragmentary scenes or still lifes, the somber atmosphere of his paintings responds to the audience's observation with echoes of hallucination. Vacillating between adult faces and childish bodies, his characters in permanent transformation tread a fine line between innocence and perversity.
In paintings like "The Blind Leading the Blind" (2017), an allegorical scene unfolds in a hybrid coloring without pure colors, treated with irony and a sardonic sense of humor. Mulder's canvases appear to be constructed from the manic accumulation of layers, scribbles, and whirlwinds of paint, with the figurative aspect almost dissolved under veils of pictorial information, as seen in "Reclining Nude" (2017). The artist's creatures take shape in an undefined or still-defining pictorial space. In drawings like "Tears of an Angel" (2019), a hermaphroditic angel appears uprooted but aspiring to the sky, between threatening carnality and mischief. In others, such as "Monkey Seduction" (2015) and "Divided Pleasures" (2022), the erotic dimension of his poetics takes center stage, and in the indeterminacy of the figures, there is a nod to the corrosive and volatile dimension of desire.
The exhibition at NONADA ZN occurs in parallel with the dialogical exhibition "Gerben Mulder & Iberê Camargo" at Carpintaria, curated by Luiz Zerbini, Paulo Azeco, and Tiago Mesquita.
