Helcio Barros: Em torno do Aleph

We are delighted to present the first solo exhibition by Helcio Barros in Germany. Helcio Barros is a visual artist and writer born in 1956 in Rio de Janeiro and currently living in São Paulo. His artistic trajectory began in the early 1980s, a moment marked by the democratization of Brazil as well as the international paradigm of painting as an expressive medium. In that field, the former civil servant engaged in drawing and studied film at the university. His path for the arts was continuous, even when not perceived by the artistic scene, he began producing small drawings in between work and has participated in solo and group exhibitions. Four decades separates that moment from the year of 2026, when in the context of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, his work was part of a tribute proposed by the collective Vilanismo, who paid homage to his mastery and dedication as an act of historical repair to an artist who inspires them. Read more Em torno do Aleph (Around Aleph) is the first show in Germany and the title refers to Jorge Luis Borges’s iconic 1945 Spanish short story „El Aleph“ (The Aleph), this mysterious device that contains all other points in the universe at once, allowing the viewer to see everything on Earth from every angle simultaneously; a kind of version of the continuous and massive practice Barros produced so far. Around the Aleph there is Sankofa. Around the fear that nothing would remain capable of generating surprise or joy, is the act of returning to get what you forgot, or was misplaced. Around the impression of a returning that would never leave or the impossibility to be free of all things seen, the bird of Sankofa continued to whisper “remember, remember”. * And around the Aleph and Sankofa, just in between, is the work of Helcio Barros: a poetic that was already there when was founded, a painting that claimed the expression of the 1980s before that paradigm was completed, opening it up all over again to include the multiples alephontes and superalephontes. Text André Pitol *Barby Asante, “Remembering Otherwise: In Honour of Those Who Have Endured”. Amal Alhaag & Selene Wendy (Ed). Sustaining the Otherwise. Berlin: Archive Books, 2026, p. 66