Mythologies of Mystery Omep

From July 25 to October 25, 2026, Casa de Cultura do Parque presents the exhibition “Mitologias do mistério” (Mythologies of Mystery) by Omep, as part of the institution's II Exhibition Cycle. Installed in the Projeto 280X1020 space, the show is curated by Claudio Cretti and features a critical text by researcher and curator André Pitol.

Born and raised in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, visual artist Gabriel Omep (Rio de Janeiro, 1986) expands his research on ancestry and spirituality through pictorial abstraction. “Mitologias do mistério” brings together four series—Alfabeto Ferramenta, Orís, Guardiões and Indumentária—articulated as a single visual cosmology, where the artist's intuitive practice develops a sort of aesthetic cryptography. The symbols and codes emerge as repetitive gestures of a unique, personal vocabulary, guiding the public into a continuous flow of symbolic visuality and contemplation.

In this exhibition, the wall painting and its relationships with coverage, extension, and color play a fundamental role in the construction of the work. The wall ceases to function merely as an exhibition support and becomes an active part of the aesthetic experience. By receiving paintings, symbols, and visual presences that evoke spiritual and ritualistic dimensions, its cardboard surface takes on the status of a symbolic territory, since this circulating material carries memories, folds, and marks that would otherwise be discarded.

The Orís—a reference to the head and the opening of paths in Afro-diasporic traditions—and the Guardiões, linked to protective entities, acquire a new dimension in the installation. They incorporate MDF pieces that interconnect with the paintings, expanding a body of work that deals directly with a specific element: a wall measuring 280 x 1020 cm.

“The direct relationship with architecture expands the reach of the painting, dissolving the conventional limits of the canvas and allowing the work to expand into the thoroughfare of that corridor. In this context, the wall operates as a field of passage and activation, welcoming visual and energetic flows that connect body, environment, and spirituality, transforming the exhibition space into a place of experience, presence, and mystery,” points out André Pitol.

In addition to Omep’s solo show, the II Exhibition Cycle includes the group exhibition “Rajada encarnada” (Galeria do Parque) and the solo show “Política da superfície” by Ana Raylander Mártis dos Anjos (Gabinete). For curator Claudio Cretti, “this cycle proposes to create tension around the constitutive dimensions of contemporary artistic practice, expanding the possibilities of reading the world and highlighting, through these frictions, the power of opposition.”