Luiz Zerbini: Botanica, Monotypes 2016-2020

Description

Since 2016, the Brazilian artist Luiz Zerbini has devoted his time to the creation of monotypes. First from within the Instituto Inhotim in Minas Gerais, then the Estudio Baren in Rio de Janeiro, the artist created unique prints obtained by a non-reproductible process. Leaves, flowers and branches, selected and collected for their contours, shapes and textures, are placed on a previously inked metal plate. A large sheet of paper covers the whole, the last necessary element for the realization of a monotype. While passing through the press the composition imagined by the artist is transferred to the sheet of paper, thus revealing amazing shapes and colours, between figuration and abstraction. Over four years, Luiz Zerbini created more than 300 monotypes, an exceptional series that the Fondation Cartier sought to bring together in a large format book. This exceptional plant repertoire is a reference for all nature lovers and fans of Luiz Zerbini's work. Includes texts by Emanuele Coccia (Italian philosopher) and Stefano Mancuso (Italian biologist).

Luiz Zerbini, born in Sao Paulo in 1959, graduated from the Fine Arts School of the Fundacao Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP). He studied painting, then photography and watercolour. Today, he sculpts, draws, takes photographs, makes videos and paints canvases of impressive dimensions, where urban landscapes, Brazilian folklore and the lush nature of the tropical flora unfold in a rich palette of colours. Zerbini has exhibited all over the world and participated in many biennials including; Sao Paulo (1987 and 2010), Cuenca (1996), Havana (2000) and Morcosul Biennial (2001). He is a founding member of the Chelpa Ferro group, which participated in the Sao Paulo Biennial in 2002 and 2004. In 2018, he exhibited works at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, for the group exhibition Southern Geometries, from Mexico to Patagonia. A mixture of historical portraits and images of Amerindian ceremonies, combining organic and geometrical motifs, his works fluctuate between dreamlike and realistic. In 2019, Trees, presented at the Fondation Cartier, gave him the opportunity to exhibit his monotypes for the first time. Emanuele Coccia is an Italian Philosopher and Associate Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. Passionate about botany, he is the author of Sensible Life: A Micro-Ontology of the Image (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016) and The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture (Medford: Polity Press, 2018). Stefano Mancuso an Italian biologist, professor at the University of Florence, member of the Accademia dei Georgofili (a Florentine institution promoting the study of agronomy, forestry, economics, and agrarian geography) and founder of the International Laboratory for Plant Neurobiology.