HEBERTH SOBRAL
“TROCA”
27.02.2022 > 02.04.2022
TROCA is the title of the first Italian exhibition by Heberth Sobral (Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1984) with A+B Gallery in Brescia. The show presents new works: one hundred paintings that compose the series I.P.O. 3, wooden sculptures and flags. Sobral questions controversial themes of everyday life and bases his artistic research on two main elements: game and color.
His career began with a photography course, which led him to be invited by Vik Muniz to work as his assistant. Heberth will later begin to develop projects that will involve the use of different medium: wooden support, tiles, paintings, drawings, banknotes, woodcuts and dolls. Every tools are useful and necessary for the construction of his own language, always focused on the representation of everyday memories filtered through the playful and rigorous use of Playmobil.
The I.P.O. 3 series of paintings results from an exploration of the similarities between the art market and the financial market. A collector who acquires an artist’s work is actually buying an interest in the artist’s “business”. Hence the idea of creating a project of ten IPOs that will be exhibited in various parts of the world. No. 1 and 2 in Rio de Janeiro, No. 4 in Tokyo and No. 3 in Italy. Each collector will be able to buy from 1 to 100 ‘shares’, initiating a game of exchanges and substitutions in which, by modifying the arrangement of the works, it will be possible to create completely new ones.
The same concept of ‘exchange’ (troca in Portuguese) is important in the wooden sculptures, formed by 3 up to 5 units, whose order can be changed by the collector. The flags, on the other hand, are the results of the desire to create a bridge between Brazil and Italy. The elements that compose them tell the story of the artist, his Brazilian culture mixed with Italian culture and history.