Onde Nasce o Rio: Bruno Novelli

Baró Galeria presents from October 24 Onde Nasce o Rio, the first solo exhibition in Paris by Brazilian artist Bruno Novelli, curated by fellow Brazilian Chico Sol. The show inaugurates the gallery’s pop up space in Paris, located at 12 Galerie Véro-Dodat, 75001, just steps away from the Bourse de Commerce Pinault Collection and the city’s main cultural attractions. The exhibition features a new series of small format paintings alongside a large scale work, marking new directions in the artist’s pictorial research. 

Bruno Novelli’s paintings create imaginary landscapes where the natural world appears as a synesthetic and fantastical environment. In recent years, his practice has been deeply shaped by time spent in the Amazon rainforest and by direct engagement with Indigenous communities. Since 2017, the artist has maintained a close dialogue with the MAHKU collective, formed by Huni Kuin artists who visually translate the stories, traditions, and visionary experiences of their people connected to the nixi pae (ayahuasca) ceremony. Novelli has already shown works alongside this group, including at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in the 2022 exhibition Les Vivants, yet he constructs his own universe populated by panthers, snakes, lizards, dragons, fish, monkeys, and other mythical creatures.

With great imagetic command, Novelli develops powerful, voluminous beings that inhabit landscapes of temporal suspension — at once evoking a primordial past and projecting an as yet unknown future. This ambiguity between memory and fiction lends his scenes both an archaic and futuristic character, as if they were set on a scarcely explored planet or within a speculative narrative.

In the new series presented in Onde Nasce o Rio, the artist extends this research by experimenting with brighter, more luminous colors. These new canvases move closer to fragments of landscape in which his bestiary takes center stage, without losing the sense of mystery and spatial vastness that characterizes his work. Though rich in detail, each composition finds its balance in a solar circle that radiates warm tones across the entire painting, giving unity and vitality to the images.