Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira shows absolutely no respect to art galleries’ walls! It’s as if he has the supernatural ability to control trees, making them burst through the walls at his own whim.
When Oliveira was a student in São Paulo, there was a plywood fence outside his window that began to peel and fade into different layers and colors. The wood, called tapumes in Portuguese, is ubiquitous in the Brazilian city. When the fence was dismantled, Oliveira collected the remains and used them as raw materials for his senior show.
Now, as a professional artist, Oliveira has clearly stepped up his game. After scavenging the dumpsters of São Paulo, the artist paints peels of wood after they are curled onto a PVC pipe skeleton. Oliveira chooses wood pieces that are already splitting and dying because they perfectly represent the decay of life in the city.
