words    /    Gabriela Davies

Intermédio

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(Rio de Janeiro - 2025)

Walking down Rua Doutor Melo Alves, we are immersed in the city's daily dynamics: hurried footsteps, crossing vehicles, faces in motion that rarely meet. In this urban landscape, the gallery emerges with its glass façade, presenting the work Intermédio, which, like a large showcase, interrupts the flow of the street. It is not a wall, but a surface that reflects and distorts the world around it, inviting reflection. The glass, while separating, also dissolves the boundary between inside and outside, creating a shared experience between the public space of the street and the private space of the gallery.

The gallery thus becomes a space of transition, both physically and conceptually. Its glass façade with mirrored cuts not only reflects the movement around it but also creates layers of barriers and openings that invite engagement. Here, we choose what we want to see and ignore what doesn’t attract us, simultaneously experiencing both inside and outside, surrounded by the street, sidewalk, fences, and urban boundaries. Gustavo Prado inserts his works into a dialogue with the architecture, which, by revealing the interior, also conceals it.

We enter this game of mirrors and reflections, transporting us to another space-time delimited by the walls of the exhibition. The works, composed of convex mirrors, are arranged throughout the gallery to create dialogues between themselves, the architecture, and the public. There is no singular image but a plurality of fragmented, distorted, and overlapping images. The viewer simultaneously becomes subject and object, observed by their own image, multiplied in unexpected angles. In this game, the "self" ceases to be fixed, allowing the emergence of multiple selves—or even Other selves. The echoes in Prado’s works transform each person into a myriad of possibilities: I am not just myself but also what my reflection proposes, prompting the question of whether we are truly the person we encounter here.

The veiled or painted layers on the mirrors add another dimension to the work. References to the art canon—such as the repetitions of Sol LeWitt and the sharp, dancing forms of Carmen Herrera and Hélio Oiticica—interrupt transparency, obscuring the view and frustrating the attempt to see everything. This incompleteness is not only formal but also conceptual. Just as we cannot fully understand ourselves, the work also remains unfinished, in constant reorganization, always proposing something new.

This structure also suggests instability in the authorship of the work. The pieces are no longer solely the creation of the artist but become an open field that unfolds through the gaze and interaction of the public. The viewer, by actively participating, becomes a co-author—or perhaps even the true author—since their presence and perception are essential for the work to be complete. The mirrors, by distorting and reflecting the surroundings, are not static but transform into reflections of the viewer, constantly reconfiguring the meaning of the work according to their position in space and time.

This dynamic of co-authorship is reinforced by the materiality of the works. The convex mirrors, commonly used in urban settings like street corners or garage exits in the Ponto Cego series, and the cable trays, screws, and nuts present in the Medida da Dispersão series, are standard industrial elements easily found in hardware stores. These materials deconstruct the traditional notion of authorship, being accessible to anyone with the resources to assemble such works.

By using urban and industrial materials, the artist proposes works without definitive authorial marks. The physical construction of the pieces, using elements sourced from the city, promotes an ongoing dialogue with the urban context from which these materials come. Thus, the work ceases to be an exclusive creation and becomes a reflection of contemporary movement—a reflection of ourselves and the city we inhabit, that shapes us and constantly reconfigures who we are.

The exhibition, therefore, becomes a field of situations, in which space actively participates in the experience. The architecture and its relationship with the surroundings directly influence what we perceive and how we position ourselves. It is impossible to observe the works without becoming aware of the place we are in. The mirrors, instead of providing definitive answers, reveal multiple possible versions of ourselves and our environment, questioning our identity in space and time. The gallery, far from being a neutral space, amplifies this reflection, becoming a conversational partner. The experience of visiting, in this sense, is a cut in time—one of the many possible stories that can unfold in this specific space. As Mário de Sá-Carneiro once said, "I am something in-between," a fragmented and transitory identity formed in the encounter between space, the works, and the present moment.

 

Gabriela Davies (Rio de Janeiro, 1993) is an art historian and curator. Her work focuses on bridging the gap between art and the public, exploring different ways to enhance communication between institutional spaces, art, and its context. In addition to organizing art history courses and cultural trips, she works on developing and producing events and exhibitions that aim to foster collaboration and social awareness—examples include Fotos Pró Rio, 50x5, Arte Substantivo Feminino, and in 2023, she co-founded Comadre, a platform dedicated to fundraising for nonprofit organizations focused on women’s and children’s health.

Gabriela was the curator and director of Galeria Aymoré (2016–2021), an institutional space dedicated to experimentation in contemporary Brazilian art. In 2024, she served as coordinator of the residency program at Instituto Inclusartiz in Rio de Janeiro. She studied Curating, Communication, and Criticism at Central Saint Martins (2013–2016) and holds a Master’s degree in Art History from University College London (2016–2017). Her master’s thesis focused on the social history of the color pink.