Lucas Arruda: Assum Preto

David Zwirner is pleased to present new work by Brazilian artist Lucas Arruda, on view at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York. The exhibition includes paintings and a site-specific light installation from his ongoing Deserto-Modelo series, marking the artist’s fourth solo presentation with the gallery.

Assum Preto continues Arruda’s investigations into the painted medium and its ability to serve as an evocative and transcendental conduit for the unveiling of light, memory, and emotion. The exhibition is titled after a species of blackbird native to eastern Brazil—whose mundane birdsong, according to local tradition, is said to transform into a beautiful melody if the bird’s eyesight has been shaded. As the artist explains: “It’s as if, when the bird has everything in sight, and is full of information and distractions, it can’t organize itself. Only when it’s no longer surrounded by images, can it organize everything in its head. In a certain way, I think this has to do with light.… For me, light is related to remembering.”¹ In the works on view, light takes on a multitude of forms, surfacing in various physical, ideographical, and affective manifestations.

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1 Lucas Arruda, “Lucas Arruda in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist,” in Lucas Arruda: Assum Preto. Exh. cat. (Madrid: Ateneo de Madrid and Fundación Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, 2022), p. 22.

Image: Lucas Arruda, Untitled (from the Deserto-Modelo series), 2023