wejetset - magazine - Local Events: Henrique Oliveira's Show at Rice Gallery

Local Events: Henrique Oliveira's Show at Rice Gallery

It’s all about using the resources around you. That’s what drew us to Henrique Oliveira’s work. By using the remains of fences and other wood collected in Sao Paulo, he’s created forms that are intriguing and original. Starting March 26, you can see Henrique’s work for the first time in the United States. The Rice Gallery in Houston, Texas will exhibit his show Tapumes until May 9, 2009.

Here’s a little more information about the show: “Oliveira uses tapumes, which in Portuguese can mean ‘fencing,’ ‘boarding,’ or ‘enclosure,’ as a title for many of his large-scale installations. The term makes reference to the temporary wooden construction fences seen throughout the city of São Paulo where Oliveira lives. It also refers to the weathered wood Oliveira uses as the primary material in his installations. Early on, Oliveira experimented with the surfaces of his paintings by gluing newspaper onto a canvas and scraping it, or mixing sand with the paint. A breakthrough occurred while he was a student at the University of São Paulo, where for two years the view from his studio window was a wooden construction fence. Over time Oliveira began to see the deterioration of the wood and its separation into multiple layers and colors as similar to the process of painting. One week before the final student show opened, the construction was finished and the worn out plywood fence was discarded. Oliveira collected the wood and used it in his first installation.” Click Read More for additional information and photos.