year head start, its hold on the South American
throne is showing signs of weakening).
There is still a certain amount of
professionalising to be done in terms of the
local market, though an awareness of this
has led to a boom in educational initiatives by
galleries and entrepreneurs. The most recent
venture of this type was inaugurated at the end
of last year – Escola São Paulo. Run by
Isabella Prata, a collector and art consultant, the
school’s focus is contemporary culture. It is not
only a place of instruction but also a hangout
for the curious. In May the space transformed
itself for a group show inspired by Warhol’s
Factory, featuring a couple of the city’s most
promising artists: Marcelo Cidade, a recurring
fixture in recent São Paulo shows, and Silvana
Mello, who works on tiles, although her work is
nothing like the monumental and extraordinarily
striking earlier pieces by the well-established
Adriana Varejão (who is these days hard at
work on painting). Silvana’s works are street: less
refined, but representative of a current trend in
São Paulo. The urban art scene has been
quietly gaining force with the young, but since a
swapping of exhibitions between Fortes Vilaça
and the smaller Choque Cultural last year, the
vibe has caught on with the trendier types.
05 Choque Cultural, an unpretentious space run
by Baixo Ribeiro and Mariana Martins – fonts
of knowledge when it comes to urban art –
hosted works by mainstream names
represented by Fortes Vilaça such as Ernesto
06 Neto and Luiz Zerbini (possibly São Paulo’s
most interesting painter at the moment), while
Fortes Vilaça showed Titi Freak, Fefe Talavera
and Zezão among the edgy batch. São Paulo’s
urban framework is conducive to a vibrant
graffiti and street-art scene. Whether it will hold
its own in the domestic contemporary market
for long is yet to be seen. For those of little
faith, there are always the Basquiat and Banksy
models, so followers could be pleasantly
surprised.
Further afield and over the river, away
from the couple of fairly sober pockets in the
Jardins, Pinheiros and Vila Madalena districts
mentioned so far, lies the recently opened and
top-notch Galeria Leme. In its less than three
years of existence, it has quickly conquered a
solid space in the market, bringing forth a
freshness of vision and approach. The exhibition
space is unbeatable. Designed by Pritzker
Prize-winning architect Paulo Mendes da
Rocha, the polished cement cube rethinks the
traditionally mandatory white gallery space.
05 On the team are fresh Brazilian and foreign
Artist Iran do Espírito Santo names, among which two have been
06 handpicked by Rob Storr to appear at this
Artist Mauro Piva year’s Venice Biennale: young up-and-coming
p090-099 Pilgrimage_Sao Paulo AR94 94 6/6/07 03:51:25
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