Pequenos Formatos/Acervo - Small Formats/Collection

/Thiago Martins de Melo

Thiago Martins de Melo has developed a distinctive pictorial language in which history, mythology, and popular culture are organized across fractured temporalities. Grounded in extensive research, his compositions layer references to social and political processes, spiritual entities, and imagery drawn from a wide range of sources—including art history, mass culture, and the visual vocabulary of comics and video games. The signs that populate these compositions proliferate and accumulate often contradictory meanings; fact and myth condense into allegories infused with Latin American utopian imagination. Throughout, intense colors and a luminosity that seems to radiate from within bring cohesion to this baroque world, charged with existential and metaphysical restlessness.

The exhibition brings together a selection of small-scale works, which make visible the variety of techniques, materials, and approaches present across his practice. The works on view range from scenes built from precise, isolated elements to richly saturated compositions. In these works, allegorical figures and recognizable references appear on surfaces where paint accumulates in thick strata and occasionally incorporates three-dimensional elements into the canvas itself. Together, they demonstrate the degree of complexity the artist is able to sustain across varying formats.

The show runs concurrently with Cosmogonia Colérica, presented at the Convento das Mercês and Chão SLZ—Martins de Melo's first solo exhibition in São Luís, Maranhão, the city where he was born. Organized around formal affinities and shared sensibilities, the works in this exhibition offer a compelling entry point into the range and depth of the artist's work.