Marcos Amaro: When Visual Guidance Isn't Enough

New Minds Studio and curator Alexander Clark presented When Visual Guidance Isn’t Enough, a solo exhibition from Brazilian artist Marcos Amaro at 2 Rivington Street, opening September 13, 2016. The show featured new works incorporating industrial materials — including an aircraft fuselage — transformed into abstract, highly sculptural compositions.

The pieces reinvented the overlooked beauty of objects built for functional purposes. Amaro’s father was a pilot and his mother a fashion designer, and the work draws on both inheritances: discarded aircraft parts and textiles become instruments for analyzing his own psyche. The use of aviation materials carries a broader cultural resonance too — a nod to Brazil’s proud aviation heritage and to Alberto Santos-Dumont, the pioneering aeronautical engineer who pushed heavier-than-air flight into the future.

Amaro deconstructs planes the way a therapist deconstructs a psyche — mapping the components, charting how the parts relate. An orange Brazilian military tarp threads through several works, referencing the country’s military and political history. Both contemporary and historical echoes surface: the crushed-metal sensibility of John Chamberlain, the engineering fascination of Tom Sachs. By salvaging materials otherwise left to rust or landfill, the work also carries an environmental consciousness.

Marcos Amaro (b. 1984, São Paulo) is a self-taught artist whose practice spans writing, design, painting, and sculpture. His work is held in collections worldwide, including that of dealer Helly Nahmad, and he is represented by galleries in the USA, Switzerland, and Brazil. He founded Fundação Marcos Amaro to support emerging Brazilian artists and runs it alongside his studio practice, split between Brazil and Miami.