Rafael Silveira’s surreal portraits, featuring scenic vistas for faces, flowers for eyes, or nothing but coral above the shoulders, show facets of human consciousness that range from the marvelous to the bizarre. The Brazilian artist characterizes his work as a plunge into the human mind, combining flowers, landscapes, and strange hybrid characteristics into faces that convey humor with a hint of menace.
Painting the Inner Garden of Consciousness With Flowers by Rafael Silveira
DCG Contemporary describes Silveira’s upcoming solo exhibition, Agricultura Cósmica, as a journey through the fertile terrain of the subconscious. His work envisions the mind as a garden where thoughts are seeds and images are the wildflowers that bloom, with a nod to pop surrealism and the uncanny.
The artist primarily uses oil for his artwork, creating pieces on panel or canvas and sometimes embellishing them with elaborate wooden frames that he has carved by hand. The sculptural details of the frames, such as an anatomical heart in 'Eyeconic Couple' or an all-seeing eye atop 'A Crocância do Tempo' — the crunchiness of time in Portuguese — resemble talismans.
Silveira’s works often start with a conventional head-and-shoulders portrait layout, but rather than depicting skin, they feature a distant horizon, as seen in 'Magnetic', or a figure’s head replaced by a coral stalk or column of fire. Some works leave out the human figure entirely, instead presenting playful configurations of bright blooms that evoke wide-eyed and befuddled looks. As human figures lose their emotional independence through their alignment with the environment, the plant life in pieces such as 'OMG' and 'PLEEESE' embodies an abundance of admiration and longing.
Agricultura Cósmica will open in London on June 12 and will run until July 10. Alongside the exhibition Plural by embroidery artist Flavia Itiberê, the show runs concurrently.
A Garden Grown From Thought - The Art of Rafael Silveira
Rafael Silveira is a visual artist based in Curitiba, Brazil. He began his artistic career in the 1990s as a graphic artist. His works filled the pages of several fanzines and independent magazines before being featured by the American publisher Dark Horse and several Brazilian magazines. His graphic work was internationally awarded and became a foundation for his pictorial vision.
In 2007, he started to paint with oils. Cities such as São Paulo, New York, London, and Milan have hosted exhibitions of the artist, and his works appear worldwide in important private and institutional collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RIO) and the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (MON - PR). A monograph containing a decade of the artist's trajectory has been published by Editora Sesi-SP, with an essay by curator Agnaldo Farias.
His exhibition 'Circonjecturas', held in 2017 at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, brought about 100 thousand visitors to the Museum, one of the most successful shows in the history of the institution. The show also travelled to another major exhibition spaces: the Centro Cultural Fiesp in São Paulo and the Caixa Cultural in Brasilia. The exhibition can be seen online at the Google Arts and Culture platform.
In 2022, the artist presented his first immersive solo show at São Paulo's Farol Santander, attracting more than 140 thousand visitors, a new record public for the artist's shows. His work was also exhibited in the Spanish Museum Afundacion, in the cities of Santiago de Compostela and Coruña, with the group show Imaxinária, being the main piece in the show's official promotional campaign.
Make sure to visit Rafael Silveira's Instagram to see more of his work.
Photos by: @rafael_silveira_art.
