Exhibitions
Célio Braga and painting as an act of care at Zipper Galeria
The exhibition Célio Braga: Beware of Painting , curated by Celso Fioravante, brings together 21 recent works by the artist and proposes a shift in painting from a logic of image to a field of material construction. In small formats—ranging from 30 × 20 cm to 45 × 40 cm—the works articulate surface, stitching, layers, and volumes as parts of a single system.
Célio Braga works with felt and silk, quilting and hand-sewing, as well as paint and wax, creating reliefs that bring painting closer to techniques of embroidery, collage, and sculpture. The exhibition is organized around a recurring theme in his work: the skin, understood both as a metaphor and as a field of thought.
Célio Braga, O OVO, 2022.
Braga is a Brazilian visual artist whose practice lies in an expanded territory of painting, where the act of painting shifts towards manual, textile, and sculptural processes. His work investigates materiality as a language, understanding the surface not as an illusory plane, but as a sensitive body, permeated by time, memory, and experience.
Working with materials such as felt, silk, wax, and paint, Braga constructs quilted, hand-stitched, and layered surfaces. The stitching—a central gesture in her process—introduces a slow and repetitive temporal dimension that brings painting closer to practices traditionally associated with embroidery, mending, and care. In this interdisciplinary approach, her works acquire relief, volume, and an almost organic presence, moving away from the image to assert themselves as objects.
Célio Braga, TREZE COLORFUL CIRCLES, 2025.
Memory, fragility, desire, grief, care, and finitude permeate the artist's research. Through slow, manual, and repetitive work, Braga's insistent gesture functions simultaneously as a practice of care and as a record of wear and tear and the passage of time.
The choice of small format for Zipper Galeria in Sao Paulo, which can be visited until February 28, also structures the exhibition as an ethical stance, based on a conscious use of materials —mostly recyclable, low cost and frequently from donations—, reinforcing a sensitive economy of resources and affections.
