The uncanny character of the latest show by São Paulo–born, Rio de Janeiro–based Luiz Zerbini was artfully revealed by both its title—“Trepanações e outros artifícios” (Trepanations and Other Artifices)—and the arrangement of the works. Six paintings, some hung unstretched on walls painted black, created a dialogue with small bronze sculptures on the floor that depicted bones or other parts of the human body. Among these were several pierced skulls, alluding to the practice of trepanation, an age-old surgical procedure to exorcise evil spirits; today it is still (although rarely) practiced,

In 2003, Paris-based Brazilian artists Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, in collaboration with Czech artist Jirí Skála, transformed the familiar Helvetica typeface into a new font they called Helvetica Concentrated, turning it into a series of dots; the size of each dot corresponds to the area of the original individual character. Now, for the series “Star Names,” 2007–, the Brazilian artists have used their invention to write the names of 287 stars listed in the Yale University Observatory’s Bright Star Catalogue. By overlaying the dot shaped letters (each individual dot has a brightness of 25