Galpão Fortes Vilaça presents Easy, Fractals & Star Map, the new exhibition by Portuguese artist Julião Sarmento, his first at Galpão Fortes Vilaça. The show features recent paintings and sculptures and establishes a fictional relationship between Edgar Degas and Marcel Duchamp – “giants of art history”, in the artist’s words. By creating a dialogue between the two masters, Julião reaffirms frequent themes of his own work: the gap between fiction and reality, mechanisms of representation and eroticism. The feminine archetype – a central element in Julião Sarmento’s practice – reappears in Fifth Easy Piece, inspired by the iconic work by Degas, La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (c. 1881). In the artist’s reinterpretation, the teenage dancer is transformed into a mature woman, molded through a modern process of 3-D printing. In Alma [Soul], the plaster molds are arranged in a steel frame
