Tunga: Vê-nus | Curated by Paulo Venancio Filho

The exhibition sheds light on Tunga’s drawing practice, a lesser-known aspect of the artist’s oeuvre, but one that was no less central to his project than his renowned sculptures, installations, and performances. Works on paper from throughout his career will be presented alongside a number of key sculptures. Tunga customarily presented his work as an integrated body that establishes an associative interplay of mirroring and self-reference between the individual pieces. At the heart of his practice lies a desire to uncover the mystical undercurrents of modernity. Tunga created a complex personal mythology through his integrated and evocative work; his practice is a synthesis of his multifarious interests in poetry, psychology, physics, alchemy, and metaphysics, expressed with a distinctive, sensual and lyrical sensibility.

Vê-nus, the name of the ancient goddess, separated by a hyphen, is how Tunga named one of his most important works. Like Duchamp’s The Large Glass, which separated the “Bride” from the “Bachelors”, Tunga separates the voyeur (Vê, see) from the nude (nus). There is a hyphen linking Tunga to Duchamp through this play with words.