PRESS RELEASE
For the inaugural exhibition at our Potsdamer Straße gallery space, we are pleased to announce the exhibition of Nú Barreto. The exhibition runs from January 27 until March 4, 2023, with a grand-opening event open to the public on Thursday, January 26, from 6pm until 9pm.
Collective human experience is the center of the exhibition, taking the shape of anonymous figures. Barreto’s dark silhouettes manifest a reality of violence and inequality, while Mbaya’s line-drawn figures are vessels that appeal to the universality of human nature.
Barreto, born in Guinea-Bissau, moved to Paris in 1989, from where he continues to create multidisciplinary, politically charged work that confronts the socio-economic conditions of the African continent. In the canvas paintings presented in this exhibition, his twisted, anguished figures free fall into disorienting spatial abstractions. From this space, rise ladders with broken rungs – a recurring motif in Barreto’s practice – pitting the individual against a rigged economic system. Though critical, even outraged, Barreto’s work is not fatalistic; he charges viewers with a responsibility towards those suffering under global structures of inequality.
Nú Barreto (born in 1966 in São Domingos, Guinea-Bissau) studied at the École Nationale des Métiers de l'Image des Gobelins in Paris. Since representing his home country at the Lisbon World Fair in 1998, Barreto has received much international exposure and acclaim. His work has been celebrated in many solo and group shows across Africa, Europe, the Middle East, South America, and China, including numerous surveys of prominent contemporary African artists. Barreto's works are housed in major public collections such as the Musée Capixaba do Negro Museum (MUCANE) in Vitória (Brazil), the Pro-Justitiae Foundation in Porto and the Arpád Szenes and Viera da Silva Foundation in Lisbon (Portugal), the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) in Ouagadougou (Burkina-Faso), as well as the Taipa House Museum of Macao (China).
