Learn more via David Zwirner.

David Zwirner is pleased to present Assum Preto, an exhibition of new and recent paintings by Brazilian artist Lucas Arruda (b. 1983), on view at the gallery’s Paris location. This marks the artist’s third solo presentation with the gallery.

Arruda’s paintings are intricate, meditative compositions that blur the boundaries between mnemonic and imaginative registers, while bringing into form a complex rendition of landscapes that is more a product of a state of mind than anything else. Titled after a species of blackbird native to eastern Brazil—whose mundane birdsong is said to transform into a beautiful melody if the bird’s eyesight has been removed, according to local tradition—Assum Preto continues Arruda’s investigations into light and darkness, and their metaphysical effects. As the artist observes, “It seems that these birds get distracted by everything in their surroundings, so they sing out of tune and in a dispersed way. Blindness is what makes them sing harmonically. I think light is what binds my works together … as if I am constantly balancing light and shadow.”1

1 Lucas Arruda, in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, April 2018; reproduced in Lucas Arruda (Paris: Éditions Cahiers d’Art, 2018), p. 86.

Image: Lucas Arruda, Untitled (from the Deserto-Modelo series), 2021