MOON, MYTHS, AND MEMORY: PAULO NIMER PJOTA AT KUNSTINSTITUUT MELLY

At Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam, A Lua e Eu (The Moon and I), the exhibition by Brazilian artist Paulo Nimer Pjota, is on view until September 21. Through a large-scale mural installation, the show unfolds the artist’s distinctive visual universe. Born in São José do Rio Preto, a small inland city in Brazil, Pjota has developed a pictorial language that combines diverse supports—such as metal sheets and raw canvas—with an iconography where the archaic and the contemporary coexist. His work operates as a form of visual collecting: images drawn from archaeology, advertising, comic books, popular culture, and music come together in open-ended constellations where meanings are not predetermined but arise through association. The artist compares his method to that of a hip-hop producer who samples and loops fragments to build a beat; similarly, he cuts and rearranges elements of history and imagination to shape his compositions.

With this exhibition, however, Pjota shifts toward a more introspective approach. Drawing on childhood memories, he introduces elements of rural life, domestic interiors, animals, and fantastical figures that move between the dreamlike and the spiritual. Forms float across open surfaces, avoiding linear perspective or central focus, and symbols—moons, masks, flowers—shift in meaning depending on their context. “It takes on a character of oneiric intoxication,” he explains, “where the perspectives of the paintings and their elements, such as flowers and beings, merge on the pictorial plane, expressing a fantastical and spiritual thought drawn from fables and myths.”

The exhibition title comes from a song by Brazilian musician Cassiano, whose gentle melancholy infuses the tone of the works. The everyday intersects with personal mythology and elusive narratives, creating an emotional landscape where reality and fantasy dissolve into one another.

Paulo Nimer Pjota: A Lua e Eu will be on view until September 21, 2025, at Kunstinstituut Melly, Witte de Withstraat 50, 3012 BR Rotterdam (Netherlands).