BEAUTY: Installation--Henrique Oliveira

Using his signature material of wood, artist Henrique Oliveira (previously here) just installed his largest work to date at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade in São Paulo, Brazil. A series of tunnels snakes through the cavernous galleries which Oliveira covered with thinly sliced pieces of flexible wood leftover from construction debris. And museum goers are invited to walk the tunnels. Experiencing this stunning interactive installation must feel like burrowing into a subterranean world only moles see... as if you are actually within the root systems of a forest!

And in a powerful political statement concerning the ideas of refuse, economics, and how society treats poverty, Oliveira morphs the wooden tunnels into a replica of the shantytowns/slums or favelas in Brazil.

http://www.henriqueoliveira.com/

BEAUTY: Installation--Henrique Oliveira

Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira just unveiled his most recent installation at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Structural columns and supports morph into organic gnarled tree trunks and roots, as if the wood it was made out of could not keep itself from yearning and reverting to its original form. It's massive in scale but actually quite poetical in its sensibility.
On view through September 9th, 2013

His installations are quite spectacular. Look at these other projects he has mounted. Again, they all involve his chosen material breaking out, escaping the confines of what humans have imposed upon it... as if the wood has a mind of its own, or a life force that cannot be quelled.

Top to bottom: The Origin of the Third World; Tapumes - Casa dos Leões; Desnatureza; Bololô

http://www.henriqueoliveira.com/