kurimanzutto presents Tupi or not tupi by a Juxtapoz favourite, previous cowl artist and eccentric artist Dr. Lakra, an exhibition that includes new works in quite a lot of media, together with portray, sculpture, ceramics, and a large-scale mural.
The exhibition’s title, Tupi or not tupi, references a phrase from the Manifiesto Antropófago (Anthropophagous Manifesto, 1928) by Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade. Written within the context of the inventive avant-garde in Twenties São Paulo, the query “tupi or not tupi” encapsulates the idea of anthropophagy that the manifesto proposes. It appropriates and transforms Shakespeare’s Hamlet with a nod to the Tupi, an indigenous South American tribe. Dr. Lakra’s works on view undertake an identical avant-garde anthropophagist strategy: they take, devour, and acceptable numerous references and iconographies via a technique of cultural digestion.
Drawing a connection to his 2015 solo exhibition at kurimanzutto, Mexico Metropolis, the artist presents new totemitos. These totemic sculptures mix effigies from African, Asian, and American cultures, and representations of non secular iconography and objects from modern tradition. Alongside these items, Lakra debuts a sequence of oil work that evoke the type of Sixteenth-century Italian Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, identified for his compositions of animals, flowers, fruits, and on a regular basis objects organized into imaginative portraits.
The central work of Tupi or not tupi is a 4 x 4 meter mural that occupies one of many gallery’s partitions. Impressed by Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias’s maps of the Pacific Ocean, created for the 1939 Golden Gate Worldwide Exhibition, Lakra gives his personal rendition—a map tracing key tattoo routes throughout Asia, Australia, North America, and South America. Reflecting his deep fascination with tattoo tradition, the exhibition contains a preview of a documentary sequence that he has been creating for over twelve years, which explores Japanese tattooing from an anthropological perspective.
