French Season, Tiago Mestre’s third solo exhibition at the gallery, emerges from his recent artistic residency in Paris. During this period, the artist extended the core lines of inquiry in his practice: architecture, painting and sculpture. Working across these disciplines, Mestre mediates the relationship between culture and nature, and the built environment and the natural world, while shifting his axis of observation from Brazil to the French capital. The exhibition title French Season subverts the historical tradition of the Grand Tour, the nineteenth-century rite of passage through which young aristocrats completed their classical education in Europe. Mestre inverts this trajectory: no longer a formative quest toward the classical center but a contemporary return from the Americas back to Europe, critically reactivating this legacy.
The resulting body of work, comprising oil paintings on raw linen and ceramic installations, is the product of Mestre’s close observation of the Parisian landscape. His focus rests on the city’s ornamental programmes of classical architecture, the metalwork found in pavilion-like structures, the vernacular craft embedded in the urban environment, and the presence of smoke rising from bohemian interiors to industrial factories, linking intimate and public spaces. Rather than quoting these elements directly, Mestre treats them as guiding elements, allowing his survey of the city to permeate into his formal and spatial decisions. While the paintings address the context of the artist’s Parisian residency, the ceramic reliefs act as the architectural counterpoints which tether the series to traditions of Portuguese pottery. In the gallery space, Mestre stages a tension between the expansive planes of his large-scale paintings and the ceramic constellations which surround them. Drawing on his architectural training, he extends the logic of his gestural canvases beyond the edges of the frame. These forms appear to migrate off the linen and onto the wall, jumping from a two-dimensional surface into the physical space. Mestre blurs boundaries between medium, unfolding between the soft, muted geometry on raw linen and the tactile curves of the clay.
Tiago Mestre's (b. 1978, Portugal) practice revolves around the idea of displacement, both in terms of discipline and territory. Originally trained as an architect, his sculptures and installations reflect his status as a Portuguese artist living and working in Brazil. Recent solo exhibitions include Fogo Fumo at Gomide&Co, São Paulo (2025); Realismo at Uma Certa Falta de Coerência, Porto (2024); Feu at ZSenne ArtLab, Brussels (2024); Céu, Terra at Museu Aberto, Monsaraz (2024); Sun, sun, sun at LAMB, London (2023), among others. Recent group shows include Terra, at Claraboia, São Paulo (2025); Inatividade contemplativa | Projeto GAS - 5ª edição, at Anita Schwartz Galeria de Arte, Rio de Janeiro (2025); Eu sou devedor à terra, at Museu Aberto, Monsaraz (2024); Ervas Daninhas, at Quadra Galeria, São Paulo (2024); Pequenas pinturas, at auroras, São Paulo (2022)