VISIT OF HENRIQUE OLIVEIRA’S STUDIO
Join us for a visit of Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira’s new studio in London.
Henrique Oliveira’s work crosses the genres of architecture and art, challenging perceptions and labels of sculpture and painting. Primarily describing himself as a painter, Oliveira started with oil on canvas and is now additionally working with his own uniquely created style of painting, with wood. It’s an unusual description but one that makes sense when visually seen, as the artist transforms the wood he uses into a three-dimensional painting. It is easy to see the connection, his adaptation and reuse of materials is completely original, with the pieces organically growing. This is not just a referral to the aesthetics of his work, but the way the work is created, processed and executed.
With constructions constantly taking place in his hometown of São Paolo, the most common wood used for building houses is often discarded, and left for reuse by others. Connecting the visual similarity of the wood when broken to a brushstroke, Oliveira started to explore the properties of wood, and in particular, the wood of discarded tapumes.