7th solo exhibition by Arnaldo Dias Baptista

Gurum-Gudum – Between Fairies and Naughty Pillows

by Roger Valença

“I was walking along the path and met an owl," sings Arnaldo Dias Baptista in the song “Gurum-Gudum”, featured on his 2004 album “Let It Bed”. The song that now lends its title to the exhibition organised twenty years later by CaSa SLAMB, gives us a clue as to which path to follow in order to enter the particular universe of this Brazilian artist-legend: the animal is the psychopomp.

The White Rabbit is Alice’s spiritual guide to Wonderland. Also it is the little dog Toto who, by running away, ends up leading Dorothy to the enchanted kingdom of Oz. Outside of the everyday world and immersed in fantasy, these characters go through the process of individuation, where the order of life is subverted in the name of the sensorial. In Arnaldo’s work, a rabbit, a green bird with an elongated beak or a wild boar, among other mysterious guides, embody the signs of this journey.

In Arnaldo’s pictorial works, the fusion of realities transforms the ordinary into something fantastic – the human body into a landscape, the landscape into a pillow, the animals into mythological beings and so on – until science is transmuted into mysticism and, finally, back into science: “I am a being”, said Arnaldo in an interview, “who sometimes finds an open road in front of me, from which I try to extract the best that is before me”.

Through works made with acrylic paint and mixed media on cardboard or canvas, Arnaldo conjures sculptural designs in effervescent tones: lemon yellow, hot pink, fluorescent orange and so on… With a pronounced physicality, in thick patches of paint that appear almost three-dimensional, Arnaldo’s imagery is above all a matter of sensation.

In “Gurum-Gudum”, everything solid melts into thin air. Figures enclosed by squares and right angles break out of their confinement through chromatic vibration. Everything seems to be on the edge between one reality and the next, in stages of representation that blend the figurative and the abstract, as if the human eye were capable of seeing invisible vibrations of light and, ultimately, deciphering/unscrambling the mysterious forces that govern our reality from beneath the surface.

“Today is the 36th”; sang Arnaldo Baptista in the sixties, suggesting an extrapolation of the calendar, the frugality of everyday life as a barrier to be transcended. Now, at 76 years of age, with his very free and unique style, he moves between conventions, realities and desires in order to make visible – like a “Candle that Reveals”, title of one of his paintings – the wonder he is able to see in the world.

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Gurum-Gudum – Between Fairies and Naughty Pillows

Until 24th March 2025

CaSa SLAMB – SLAMB Gallery

Mateus Grou Street, 106 – Pinheiros, São Paulo.

Visiting hours:

Wednesdays to Mondays, from 3 to 6pm. Closed on Tuesdays.

Other times via WhatsApp appointment +55 11 95552 5573.

Curators: Roger Valença and Lucas Velloso

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Other references in English

Chronology: https://arnaldodiasbaptista.com.br/cronologia/