Tudo é perigoso, tudo é divino e (ainda é) maravilhoso / Everything Is Dangerous, Everything Is Divine, and (Still) Wonderful
by Victor Gorgulho, 2025
Solfejo – Solo Exhibition
CAIXA Cultural Rio de Janeiro
ATENÇÃO PARA O REFRÃO! [Watch for the chorus!], one of the neon sculptures by artist Felippe Moraes (Rio de Janeiro, 1988), announces itself to us right at the entrance of the space, like a kind of alert as much political as festive. Referencing, perhaps, the main line from Caetano Veloso’s musical composition, immortalized in the voice of singer Gal Costa (1945–2022), the passage from “Divino Maravilhoso” [Divine, Wonderful] (1968) works as a rich prologue to an exhibition that references sound, music, and the capacity for resilience and overcoming that comes with it — especially within the Brazilian social experience — while also leading us to this conclusion through enigmatic silences, muffled sounds, unresolved sonic impulses that are nonetheless resounding and potent in the way they impact the body of whoever visits the present exhibition.
In his first solo exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, the city where he was born, in a suburb of Rio, Moraes presents a panoramic view of his production from recent years, ranging from the aforementioned neon sculptures to works still rarely exhibited within the Brazilian contemporary art circuit — whether in institutional settings or within galleries and fairs. In his videos, installations, sound and visual sculptures, photographs, and beyond, the artist reveals a multimedia practice that, unlike many peers of his generation, does not seek to justify or explain itself through formal, academic, oblique means that are largely inaccessible to most of the audience attending his show.
As a singular kind of “artist-alchemist,” Moraes presents, in the body of his work — in an inconclusive, ongoing completeness, since the artist continues to produce incessantly — an unexpected objectivity and pragmatism with which it is radically imbued, contaminated. If, on one hand, “alchemy,” or a certain “mysticism,” beliefs in epistemological systems that fall outside the bounds of the contemporary Western lexicon, appear in the works gathered here, these are precisely the aspects the artist chooses as fields of interest in his own daily life. This is not a paradox, however: this so-called “artist-alchemist” draws nothing from the figure of the Romantic artist, whose centuries-old legacy renders him somewhat paralyzed, somewhat perpetually in a state of alert and fear.
Moraes operates, however, in the opposite direction: if the work of art is labor, the artist combines his manual virtuosity with his often sharp conceptual and theoretical research into subjects that span a broad spectrum of interest — not only to him, but of relevance to all of us who, gathered here, form (even if against the will of many) a social body of our own Terra Brasilis, an undeniable collective body, a social body, still endowed with an imagination of its own and with countless agreements, dissonances, disparities, ruptures, and alliances besides.
Despite a desire to please everyone, Moraes evokes the samba of the city where he was born, invites viewers into an active stance before works in which sound only becomes possible through their relationship with the piece, reflects with erudition on the human experience in its most delicate awareness of our finitude on this planet called Earth, and invites us to dance amid other possibilities of celestial encounters. As distant as they are close, an achievement bravely attained by his production — always, however, in a generous, unassuming manner, as any good artistic achievement possibly should (or ought to) be.
Victor Gorgulho
2025