4.000 A.D.: Bruno Baptistelli

Bruno Baptistelli, the latest artist represented by Galeria Luisa Strina, introduces his first exhibition in the gallery’s Room 2. Borrowing its title from the first line of a 1964 manifesto by Dutch-Surinamese conceptual artist stanley brouwn (1935-2017), Baptistelli creates a dark environment in which the objects are immersed in a game of light and shadow. 4.000 d.C. is a summary of the propositions developed by the artist in the last five years, in which he investigates the aesthetic, linguistic, social and political meanings of darkness through the use of conceptual art tools and, more recently, through the uses and symbolisms of gold for ancestral and contemporary Black cultures.

In the middle of his dark room, inside a large museum-like base, we find a group of jewels that evoke the different parts of the artist’s body: head, arms, legs. These are objects reminiscent of artifacts found in archeological sites, exhibited in a way that mimics the traditional displays of major imperial museums, such as the British Museum in the UK, or the Museum of Gold in Colombia. By alluding both to the ritual meaning of fingerstalls in Ancient Egypt and the popularization of the use of grills in the context of hip-hop, Baptistelli traces a trans-historical arc of a culture that has been resisting and shifting across centuries.

Bruno Baptistelli (São Paulo, 1985. Lives and works in São Paulo)

Future exhibitions include the group show The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21^st Century, which opens on April 5, 2023 at The Baltimore Museum of Art, later touring to the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, in 2024-5. Curated by Asma Naeem, Gamynne Guillotte, Hannah Klemm and Andréa Purnell.

His main solo exhibitions include: Memento, 55SP, São Paulo, Brazil, 2022; Outro, GDA, São Paulo, Brazil, 2021; Blues - umtrabalhoumtexto, São Paulo, Brazil, 2019; Acúmulo, Galeria Pilar, São Paulo, Brazil, 2018; For A While, Artkartell Projectspace, Budapest, Hungary, 2017; Narrativas cotidianas, Galeria Fayga Ostrower, Complexo Cultural Funarte Brasília, Brasília, Brazil, 2015. Main group shows include: Histórias brasileiras, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP), São Paulo, Brazil, 2022; Memórias do Futuro: cidadania negra, antirracismo e resistência, Memorial da Resistência de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, 2022; Enciclopédia negra, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, 2021; IMS Convida, Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS), São Paulo, Brazil, 2020; Histórias afro-atlânticas, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) and Instituto Tomie Ohtake (ITO), São Paulo, Brazil, 2018. His works feature in major public and private collections, such as: coleção moraes-barbosa (cmb), São Paulo, Brazil; Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz (IFF), Ribeirão Preto, Brazil; Instituto Moreira Salles, São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP), São Paulo, Brazil; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.