Célia Euvaldo (São Paulo, 1955) presents her first solo exhibition in one of the mezzanine rooms at Instituto Tomie Ohtake. Accustomed to paint large-sized canvases, the artist took up the challenge of going beyond these limits, performing an intervention directly on the walls of the exhibition space. Expansive in scale, this site-specific approach follows the artist’s pictorial proposition, known for producing drawings and paintings always in black on white, or using solely one of these two colors.
Instead of brushes, Celia Euvaldo uses broom and squeegee, giving magnitude to gesture and producing different reliefs. Her ‘scans’ take the very ink’s time, which keeps on thinning until her stroke fades away, often using the strength of her whole body. In a text of 2009 on the work of the artist, the critic Ronaldo Brito point outs that “...the ink is concentrated almost uniformly, then sprawls across the surface, or else, accumulates, here and there. The broom and the squeegee actions play alternating roles, stand in opposition to each other, under the rule of a formal law that solely provides for the term of that protocol-free exercise.’ To perform this action, Celia ordered the production of a 120-cm-long broom, which proved ideal to fill in the spaces of the large room occupied by the exhibition.
 
Celia Euvaldo (São Paulo, 1955) has been exhibiting her works regularly since the mid 1980s, having been awarded the 1st prize - Foreign Travel – at the 11th National Salon of Fine Arts in 1989. Between 1988 and 1997, her work consisted primarily of drawing on paper, exploring and stretching the limits of this category. Since then, she has been mainly focused on painting. Among her most recent events, her solo exhibitions held in 2011 at Museu da Gravura [Engraving Museum] in the City of Curitiba, Paraná state, and at Lemos de Sá Gallery in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais are worth highlighting, as well as the “Poeminhas” [‘Little Poems’] exhibition at Maria Antônia University Center, in São Paulo. In 2006 an exhibition entitled ”Brancos” [Shades of White] was held at Pinacoteca Station, São Paulo. Participated in the 5th Mercosur Biennial, Porto Alegre, in 2005.

Brazilian architecture seen by great photographers
Curated by André Correa do Lago, Arquitetura Brasileira Vista por Grandes Fotógrafos [“Brazilian Architecture Seen by Great Photographers”] follows up on series of exhibits on Brazilian architecture that have been organized by Instituto Tomie Ohtake since 2010. The first was Viver na Floresta [“Living in the Forest”], curated by Abílio Guerra, then Julio Katinsky conceived of O Coração da Cidade - A Invenção do Espaço de Convivência [“The Heart of the City – The Invention of the Space of Coexistence”] and now, the ambassador and expert scholar on the theme, author of the book Oscar Niemeyer – An Architecture of Seduction, presents the country's milestone works through the lenses of big name photographers.
 
According to Correa do Lago, talented photographers are important architectural critics, since one must get to know and analyze a work in order to attempt to explain it through images. “It is in this sense that the photographer, as Lucien Hervé says, has to distill the ideas of the architect,” the curator adds.
 
With 28 artists, eleven of which are Brazilian, the exhibition includes French and American photographers, as well as one Canadian, one Argentinian, two Germans, two Italians, one Swiss, one Spaniard and one Ukrainian: Angelo Serravalle, Bob Wolfenson, Cristiano Mascaro, Dmitri Kessel, Fernando Stankuns, Francisco Albuquerque, Ge Kidder Smith, Hans Gunter Flieg, Iñigo Bujedo, Jean Manzon, Jorge Machado Moreira, Leonardo Finotti, Lucien Clergue, Marcel Gautherot, Massimo Listri, Michel Moch, Nelson Kon, Paolo Gasparini, Patrícia Cardoso, Peter Scheier, René Burri, Rob Crandall, Robert Polidori, Romulo Fialdini, Thomas Farkas, Todd Eberle, Virgile Simon Bertrand.
 
Divided into two parts, the exhibition, in its first section, brings together 18 buildings which have had a great influence on the country and the world. The idea is to display works that were documented by great photographers, both Brazilians and foreigners. Meanwhile, in the second part, the curator sought to present only stairways and ramps, not only because they present one of the biggest challenges to architects (and photographers!), but also because some of the most beautiful stairways and ramps of the 20th century were built in Brazil.
 
“This exhibition is dedicated to the photographers who have helped us to discover, appreciate and eventually love architecture, and to the public which has demonstrated more and more that they identify photography and architecture as two of the most remarkable artistic manifestations of the 21st century,” Correa do Lago states.