Lucas Arruda: Assum Preto

David Zwirner is pleased to present Assum Preto, an exhibition of new and recent works by Brazilian artist Lucas Arruda, 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 a depiction of reality. As Paulo Pasta writes in a recent essay on the artist’s work, “Lucas Arruda’s painting draws to itself the qualities and possibilities of the best painting: the long attention, the demanding and sensitive production, the ability to make the relationship between ‘what’ and ‘how’ flow harmoniously. He does this in an equally powerful manner, because, while it alludes to painting’s past, to its grandeur (lost?), his painting also accompanies us in the present. Wouldn’t we be there, in the enjoyment of his work, separated from the tension of the present? I think it would be the opposite: by turning on this visionary light, he also makes us feel and see the obscurity and dissension of our times.”

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

Image: Installation view, Lucas Arruda: Assum Preto, David Zwirner, Paris, 2022