Leda Catunda, Irony is urgent

Leda Catunda tackles the world of visual and material excess with a vivid reflection on the sensory saturation of contemporary culture. The exhibition’s title - I like to like what others are liking - is a contemporary confession, emblematic of the complex interweaving of taste, desire, and identity. It is the largest monographic retrospective of the artist outside Brazil, bringing together works from the 1980s to the present day. Between large-scale installations and essential watercolors, each work juxtaposes the handmade with industrial production, offering a playful critique of pop culture and consumerism. In the 1980s, Catunda helped transform the Brazilian art scene by blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture, in the 1990s, her practice evolved toward abstraction, characterized by organic and dilated forms. More recently, her work has taken on a baroque intensity - with pleated draperies, protuberances, lush ornamentation, and proliferating folds - inviting viewers to reflect on the limits and mechanisms of aesthetics. Across four decades, her practice continues to radiate urgency and irony, offering not only a critique of the consumption of pop culture but also a light and poetic recovery of everyday life. The works, spanning different periods, show how visual pleasure, personal memory, and mass imagery can coexist in a disordered, playful, and visceral way.