Opening Reception: Tuesday, May 14, 6-9pm
Exhibition Dates: May 14 - May 15, 2019
7 Franklin Place
New York, NY 10003
May 11, 2019
Installation View of Pingo, NYA Gallery
NYA Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition featuring nearly 100 works by the artist known as Pingo, which stems from a childhood nickname. In Portuguese, the word can be translated as drop, trickle, dribble, or even touch. Much of the emotional and intellectual thrust behind this show is based on the artist’s interpretation of this multi-faceted term. Drawing upon personal histories and past traumatic events, Pingo applies and manipulates daubs, strokes, drips, and pingos of paint. The artist is primarily interested in eliciting raw emotion through the use of color while probing the depths of imagination and subconscious within each spectator.
Through an impressive assembly of mixed media work, large-scale paintings, and visceral installations, the show explores motifs related to personal chaos, circulating forces of conformity, societal systems and constraints, notions of confinement, self-discovery, transformation, rebirth, and transcending institutional categorization in order to forge new identities. As visitors progress through the exhibit, they are confronted with myriad visual manifestations of trauma, which prompts each person to consider his or her own forms of hardship and the means available for overcoming obstacles. Ultimately, the artist and organizers behind this expansive, multi-sensory exhibition hope to provide some sort of consolation and encouragement for others, underscoring how the artistic process—both making and viewing—can serve as a form of redemption or salvation. Through smears of paint and drops of color, the artist aspires to facilitate bodily healing, psychological repair, and the restoration of compassion as an important value in society.
The solo exhibition will open to the public on Tuesday, May 14th with a reception from 6-9pm. The show will remain on view until Wednesday, May 15th. Visitors may see the show during its short run between the hours 12-5pm. For more information, please call (917) 472-9015 or email press@newyorkart.com.
About the Artist
Pingo was born in the town of Illicinea in Minas Gerais, located in southeastern Brazil. Living on a coffee farm, the artist enjoyed both the labors and comforts of a bucolic life: raising chickens, listening to Brazilian jazz and American Rock, and accompanying Pingo’s mother to sell her goods at the market. Pingo studied in São Paulo and later in Rio de Janeiro, focusing on pharmacology and nutrition. While in Rio de Janeiro, Pingo managed a group of caregivers at a local university hospital. Many years later, Pingo took a job as crew chief on an offshore oil rig, working under intense conditions. Eventually, the artist emigrated to the United States and attended the Lee Strasberg School of Acting, and appeared in a number of off-Broadway shows, including A Streetcar Named Desire.
In recent years, Pingo turned to painting as a form of therapy, and as a way to confront the tumultuous past. Initially, the artist kept this body of artistic output hidden. However, after sharing some of the work with close friends and receiving encouragement to publicly exhibit the collection, the artist decided to share this art and vision with others. Pingo has described this exhibition as a visual hallelujah, meaning that the works collectively and sonorously bring forth a sense of rejoice because they represent one individual’s triumph over an extraordinary series of adversities.