Lucas Arruda: Deserto-Modelo / Ron Nagle: Euphoric Recall

Curated by Moritz Wesseler

Lucas Arruda: Deserto-Modelo
With Deserto-Modelo Fridericianum is presenting Lucas Arruda’s first institutional solo show in Germany. Born in São Paulo in 1983, the artist has created an oeuvre including paintings, prints, light installations, slide projections and films. It reflects an intensive and dedicated examination of a wide spectrum of topics ranging from the conceptual framework of painting all the way to the conditions of life itself. Arruda is particularly interested in portraying landscapes and seascapes, although his work never references actual locations. Instead, he focuses on imaginary images evoked by thoughts of such scenes and investigates the associated light conditions, atmospheres and emotions. However, many of his works are characterized by such a degree of abstraction that the reference to a landscape is only suggested by the horizon lines that are present to varying extents. Independent of the degree of their legibility, his visual formulations give rise to a moment of deceleration and concentration and thus, with an incisive yet silent power, contradict the ever-faster rhythms of life today.

Ron Nagle: Euphoric Recall
For more than six decades now, Ron Nagle has been producing works characterized by the fact that they manifest a maximum height of 20 cm. Despite their limited heights, these works, made among other things of ceramics, plastics, glazing agents and car paint, boast a presence and an effect which could hardly be more impressive. This accounts for the unique status of Nagle’s work within the sculpture genre and results from his works’ interplay of unusual shapes, diverse colors and tactile surfaces. Accordingly, in his objects, shapes with an organic feel to them meet architectural elements, brightly gleaming colors are confronted with unobtrusive, restrained hues and rough, porous surfaces contrasted with high-gloss ones. His work is not only uncommonly fresh, soulful and sophisticated; it is also mysterious and sometimes surreal. Nagle moreover provides his work with additional levels of meaning by furnishing it with elaborate titles which are usually characterized by a great propensity for wordplay and humor.

The exhibition at the Fridericianum is the first solo presentation in Germany of Ron Nagle, who was born in San Francisco in 1939. Realised in cooperation with the Vienna Secession the show will also be accompanied by an artist’s book.

Opening hours: Tuesday–Sunday & public holidays 11am–6pm