One of Brazil’s most celebrated contemporary artists, Carlito Carvalhosa works in a variety of media to explore materiality, perception, and space. Recently, Carvalhosa used his wax wall-bound works from the 1990s as a starting point for a new body of work. These earlier works featured chaotic protrusions of fingers and other objects, and experimented with tactility and opacity through their layers of wax, resin, and paraffin. In returning to these works, and in a sense remaking them, Carvalhosa chooses symmetrical compositions and carefully layered geometric shapes in oil paint that can both emphasize the pattern of fingers and obscure the 3D qualities of the work. Aside from being beautiful, sensual works, Carvalhosa also sets up a conceptual dilemma in the disjuncture between sight and touch where the artist’s fingers experience the tactility of material that is countered by shapes of color perceived by sight. Carvalhosa has exhibited in numerous significant Brazilian venues, and his works are included in important public collections such as Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami; Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro; Pinacoteca of the State of São Paulo; and Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo.
