On November 13th, Portas Vilaseca inaugurates Fogo Corredor, a group exhibition featuring 20 artists from different generations and languages, marking the closing of the 2025 program. Curated by Lucas Albuquerque, the exhibition presents artists represented by the gallery and guests from various regions of the country, including Guerreiro do Divino Amor, Rayana Rayo, Thiago Martins de Melo, among others.
In a provocative exhibition design, Fogo Corredor stems from reflections on popular stories and enchantments associated with fire. This includes the legend that gives the show its title: a supernatural being made of fire, part of popular beliefs in the North and Northeast of Brazil, whose narratives associate it with the souls of dead people who return to frighten, burn, or persecute their victims.
Sometimes linked to forests, and at other times to small towns, this entity is not a solitary apparition – connecting to other supernatural beings from different cultures, such as the Hitodama in Japan, the British will-o’-the-wisp, the Greek Helena, or, in Brazil itself, the Mãe D’ouro. Preserving their singularities and links with distinct contexts and times, these narratives are treated as vestiges of popular knowledge, used to reflect on the relationships between life, death, and spectral survival, leading the visitor on a poetic and meditative experience.
Split into two floors, the show proposes two complementary exhibition paths.
The ground floor gathers works that suggest or derive from relationships with the sacred, whether profane or not. André Griffo, Thiago Martins de Melo, and Manuela Costa Lima address the sometimes punitive, sometimes purifying connotations of fire in Christian and pagan traditions, while Paloma Bosquê, Ayla Tavares, and Alex Cerveny propose narratives around rituals, fantastic beings, and syncretic wanderings, exploring the forms and materialities of their works.
On the third floor of the gallery, the phantasmagoric narratives of fire appear as a pop element, presented in works that treat it as pastiche, derivation, or virtuality. This group brings together artists such as Guerreiro do Divino Amor, biarritzzz, and Randolpho Lamonier, in whose works fire manifests in narratives that intertwine history and politics, evoking historically locatable subjects, living or dead. Mateus Moreira and Luiza Lukah, on the other hand, delve into fabulations about incandescent beings.
In a proposition that combines art, popular history, literature, and fiction, the Rio de Janeiro-born curator Lucas Albuquerque suggests a supernatural narrative, in which each work acts as an entity in a shared story: “Guided by the threads of fiction spun by twenty artists – at times anchored in echoes of reality, especially in works of a more political nature – Fogo Corredor presents two small cosmic universes, woven between the artist’s vital force and the spirituality of those who are summoned and/or imagined.”
Info
Curated by: Lucas Albuquerque
Artists: Alex Cerveny, Amorí, André Griffo, Antônio Pichillá, Arthur Palhano, Ayla Tavares, biarritzzz, Chachá Barja, Guerreiro do Divino Amor, Gustavo Dióneges, Julia Aragão, Kika Carvalho, Luiza Lukah, Manuela Costa Lima, Mateus Moreira, Paloma Bosquê, Randolpho Lamonier, Rayana Rayo, Thiago Martins de Melo, Zé Carlos Garcia
Exhibition period: 13 Nov 2025 – 10 Jan 2026
Opening: 13 November, 7 – 10 pm
Where: Portas Vilaseca – Rua Dona Mariana, 137 – casa 2 – Botafogo – 22280-020 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil.
Visiting times: Tuesday to Friday, 11 am to 7 pm; Saturdays, 11 am to 5 pm.
Free admission
Highlighted image
THIAGO MARTINS DE MELO
Esqueleto do Diabo – homenagem a Héctor Escobar Gutiérrez, 2024 (detail)
Series: Chama Negra
Oil on jute and embroidery on jute thread
168 x 108.5 cm | 66 x 42 1/2 in
