This'll Be Sweet

installing at Rice Gallery

opens Thursday, March 26

Henrique Oliveira
Tapumes
Rice University Gallery
26 March - 9 May 2009


Oliveira uses tapumes, which in Portuguese can mean “fencing,” “boarding,” or “enclosure,” as a title for many of his large-scale installations. The term makes reference to the temporary wooden construction fences seen throughout the city of São Paulo where Oliveira lives. It also refers to the weathered wood Oliveira uses as the primary material in his installations. Early on, Oliveira experimented with the surfaces of his paintings by gluing newspaper onto a canvas and scraping it, or mixing sand with the paint.

Oliveira’s installations, which he refers to as “tridimensionals,” have evolved into massive, spatial constructions that combine painting, architecture, and sculpture. In some installations he uses walls as supports, attaching and shaping lengths of PVC tubing to create enormous, protruding forms over which he layers thin sheets of wood. In others, he arranges thousands of pieces of painted wood into gestural abstract “paintings” that spill off the wall into the viewer’s space.


Henrique Oliveira was born in Ourinhos, Brazil in 1973. Oliveira has exhibited in numerous exhibitions in Brazil and in 2008 participated in Something from Nothing, an invitational exhibition organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, Louisiana. He lives and works in São Paulo.

Tapumes, São Paulo Cultural Center