São José do Egito, PE, 1985 \ Lives and works in São Paulo
With a dense stylistic trait that runs throughout the most diverse media and formal outcomes, Deyson Gilbert has a body of work that includes objects, sculptures, installations, videos, photographs, paintings, engravings, texts, propositions and performances. Through the combination of collected everyday elements — sometimes radically banal or radically hermetic — the artist reconstitutes points of tension within the collective social imaginary in unexpected solutions, which are as precarious as they are complex. In doing so, he welds together ideas and speculations about specific themes of the image economy of the 20th and 21st centuries.
From functional materiality to conceptual formulation, Deyson brings together tools, objects, fabrics, systems, symbols and dogmas in visually powerful operations, which are overloaded with uncountable semantic threads. As in the chiaroscuro strategy, with every move the artist exposes and conceals themes, ideas and opinions, which hark back to the canons of art history, western philosophy and political science, as well as to the depths of occultism, popular beliefs and subterranean narratives.
Graduated in Visual Arts from the University of São Paulo, he was a member of the Criticism and Curatorship Study Group under the guidance of Tadeu Chiarelli. As an artist, his solo exhibitions include “Questão de ordem”, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2019), “non ducorocud non ou impugnação, plebiscito e legastenia”, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2014-2015), DCVXVI, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2014); The State of the Art, Galeria Elba Benítez, Madrid (2013). He has participated in exhibitions such as the 33rd Panorama of Brazilian Art, at MAM-SP, São Paulo, Brazil; XVI Yogyakarta Biennial, Indonesia; “Mythologies”, curated by Kiki Mazzucchelli, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France; “Imagine Brazil”, curated by Gunnar B. Kvaran and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Astrup Fearnar. Kvaran and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway; “Monument to Cold War Victory”, curated by Yevgeniy Fiks and Stamatina Gregory, Cooper Union, New York, USA; and the artist residency program at the Delfina Foundation, London, England. He was also the founder and editor of the art criticism magazine Dazibao.
