Uma e algumas cadeiras/Camuflagens: Cildo Meireles

One and Some Chairs/Camouflages is an original exhibition showcasing works by visual artist Cildo Meireles, revisiting a series of projects conceived in the 1980s and 1990s.

The installation One and Seven Chairs, a 1997 project first exhibited at the Lelong Gallery in New York, pays homage to fellow artist Joseph Kosuth. The installation comprises seven elements, using assorted materials and techniques. A solid wooden chair opens the installation, followed by six towers offering different interpretations of the same chair. One tower contains 110 glass sheets reflecting the image of a chair, while another, of identical shape, is made up of 1,100 canvases painted with acrylic, with the painting also alluding to the form of the chair.

Emptiness is a recurring theme, previously explored by the artist in works like Invisible Sphere and Disappearances. The exhibition includes an acrylic tower whose interior reveals the emptiness of the chair itself. "I’m interested in this evanescent thing, a kind of dissolution of the object. There’s a desire to play with the faculty of seeing through a sort of invisibility of invisibility. These works possess an almost semantic autonomy as objects. Invisible Sphere deals with an existence made up of non-existences," Cildo explains.

Cildo Meireles will also present in this exhibition a series of paintings on various supports, mostly unpublished: “Camouflage is a project predating the One and Seven Chairs installation, now being completed 36 years later. These are essentially paintings on different frames, which reference functionality. Camouflaged paintings on benches, chairs, umbrellas, common objects for daily use—always involving an object that consists of fabric and structure.”

Among the paintings in the Camouflage series, the chair reappears, alongside a bench, a parasol, an umbrella, a stretcher, and tents—one of them resting on a metal structure on the floor. The artist adds: “This part of the exhibition, which I call Camouflage, could have another name, namely floor painting, because all the works are resting on the floor.”

The artist also exhibits a series of hyperrealistic paintings—two-dimensional geometric representations of three-dimensional shapes. White brushstrokes on blue compose the Épuras, also placed on the floor. Two épuras accompanied by two studies of chairs convey Cildo Meireles’ artistic thinking, connecting painting with mathematical rationality. Here, the artist uses descriptive geometry as the artwork’s constitutive tool, employing two perpendicular planes where two views of the object are represented—one from the front and the other from above. These paintings portray views from frontal and horizontal projection planes, along with an intersection that makes up the épura.

One and Some Chairs/Camouflages began production in 2020 and includes 13 works in which Cildo returns to painting, paying homage to his great masters, including the Brazilian artist Alfredo Volpi.