Beginning November 14, Gruta – Espaço de Arte Contemporânea presents Electric Feel, a group exhibition curated by Chico Soll featuring works by Ana Zala, Emer Freire, Fernando Moletta, Henrique Cutait, and Lorenzo Muratorio. Founded in 2021 in the Barra Funda neighborhood, the space is dedicated to the research, experimentation, and dissemination of Brazilian contemporary art, with a focus on supporting artistic careers and integrating emerging artists into the institutional and commercial circuits.
Suspended between static electricity, goosebumps, and the clash of bodies, Electric Feel conjures a high-voltage atmosphere marked by electric hues, ghostly presences, and sensations that elude spoken language. The image of energy that builds up only to dissipate runs through the exhibition, grounded in the premise that “energy is a byproduct of desire” and that we are all “electrical impulses beneath the shadow of the same forecasted storm,” as defined by the curator.
The works investigate materials, forms, and visual vernaculars across diverse paths, operating among frictions, magnetic attractions, and subtle discharges. Ana Zala translates internal experiences into drawings and paintings whose textures and palettes evoke zones of friction and sensory perception; Emer Freire pairs industrial and organic materials in hybrid forms that seem to harbor a latent charge poised to disrupt stillness; Fernando Moletta probes the afterlives of modernism through atmospheric paintings.
Henrique Cutait reframes utilitarian objects through material translations in which the silver seams of solder guide glass into three-dimensional space, yielding fictional artifacts that attempt to isolate and store tension—a human endeavor to “control what once seemed uncontrollable.” Lorenzo Muratorio develops ceramic sculptures that oscillate between object, organism, and mineral, transferring bodily impetus into clay to explore vitreous gloss, kiln chemical reactions, and high-temperature oxidations.
The exhibition stages an encounter among these practices within an environment under high electrical tension. Much like a short circuit, the contact between distinct forms and materials suggests energy in motion, on the verge of transforming or vanishing entirely. “A strange, pungent sensation fills the room. The shock of bodies generates a luminescence charged by dissipated energy,” remarks Chico Soll, drawing parallels between the ensemble, the atmospheric power of electrical phenomena, and St. Elmo’s fire—a luminous omen that conjures a fiction capable of giving contour to the inexplicable.
