Matheus Rocha Pitta’s exhibition “Primeira Pedra” (First Stone) made the most of Mendes Wood’s opening room by dimming it. The operation was surprisingly simple: The artist installed fluorescent lamps hanging from the high ceiling all the way down to well below eye level. These illuminated a group of eighteen square concrete slabs with newspaper cutouts encrusted on their surfaces. The steles, as the artist calls this particular hybrid of sculpture and collage, allude both to ancient stone monuments and to the make-do slabs that seal the graves of the poor in cemeteries in the Brazilian backlands.