“Now there is nothing but flowers”, echoes Caetano Veloso’s voice between two thrivingly ornated paintings on the third floor of the exhibition “Overnone, overnone in chaos”, Ismael Monticelli’s solo show at Galeria Portas Vilaseca.

His complaint – an ironic requiem to the fading of a paradise made up of machines, cars, gas, outdoors, freeways, and shopping malls – is a Brazilian take on the song (Nothing but) Flowers, by the Talking Heads.

As he cries aways his yearning for the old Pizza Hut, later covered with daisies, the song mocks the primitivist fantasies that now and again plague civilizations with messianic longings for the utter reflorestation of all life, minds, and territories, yielding revolutionary ideologies – albeit often authoritarian ones – that stubbornly devote themselves to rebuilding nations, peoples, i...