The Athos Bulcão Foundation presents the exhibition Tudo se transforma em alvorada [ Everything Transforms into Dawn ], by Ismael Monticelli. The show marks an unprecedented encounter between the artist’s contemporary practice and one of the lesser-known and most experimental series by Athos Bulcão (1918–2008): the masks. For the first time, the Foundation opens its collection to a direct dialogue with a contemporary artist, bringing together around 20 works by the modernist in conjunction with new creations by Monticelli.
Based in Brasília, Monticelli deepens in this exhibition his investigation into the federal capital through non-official narratives that run through its history. The exhibition proposes a sensitive and critical reading of the city, revealing historical, mystical, political and aesthetic layers that escape the monumental discourse of modern architecture. In this context, Brasília emerges as a territory open to fabulation, detours and retrofuturist imaginaries (see gallery below).
The starting point of the project is Athos Bulcão’s masks, works that reveal a little-known experimental facet of the artist, far removed from his celebrated tiled works and modular panels. Produced using a range of materials, these pieces condense references to anthropology, memory and the idea of origin, articulating images that move between birth, death and human evolution. According to Athos, the series was influenced both by Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey and by anthropological collections seen at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris in the early 1970s.
Drawing on this body of work, Monticelli proposes a reading that repositions the masks within the graphic, cinematic and psychedelic imaginary of the 1960s and 1970s. The artist brings Athos’s works into dialogue with the famous Star Gate sequence from Kubrick’s film and with icons of graphic design from the period, such as the so-called “pictogram head”, in which mental flows and states of consciousness are visually represented. His new works, unfolding across installation, painting, video and neon, expand this universe, creating a symbolic field in which interiority, history and fiction interpenetrate.
With a critical text by Marília Panitz, the exhibition also forms part of an expanded programme, which includes audio description of the works and the curatorial text, an educational project, a workshop on the influence of Brasília’s architecture on contemporary art, and a public conversation with the artist. Dates for these activities will be announced throughout the exhibition period.
This project is supported by the Federal District’s Culture Support Fund, and will remain on view until 10 January 2026 at the AB Gallery of the Athos Bulcão Foundation, in Brasília.
Info
Tudo se transforma em alvorada [Everything Transforms into Dawn]
Ismael Monticelli in dialogue with Athos Bulcão
Critical text: Marília Panitz
Exhibition period: 28 November 2025 to 10 January 2026
Venue: Athos Bulcão Foundation – AB Gallery
Address: W3 Sul, CRS 510, Block B, Unit 51 – Asa Sul, Brasília, DF
Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 9am–6pm / Saturday, 9am–1pm
