OSGEMEOS: CULTIVATING DREAMS
Lehmann Maupin is pleased to present Cultivating Dreams by the duo group of artist OSGEMEOS. Featuring 13 new paintings and a site-specific immersive installation, the exhibition invites us into the vast and magical landscape of Tritrez, a dreamworld invented by the artists and developed in their work over the past three decades.
June 22 - August 16, 2024
Best known for their signature figurative style, OSGEMEOS have created an entire universe of fantastical yellow characters rendered in thin outlines, enlarged faces, and simplified features. Yellow is significant because the artists often dream in a yellow hue; they explain, ”[yellow] has been a very spiritual color for us since we started drawing. When we were drawing at our mother’s house, the sun would come through the windows and the studio would become yellow. So we always found it mystical, peaceful, and harmonious.”
In Hoje vai ter som! (There’ll be music today!) (2023), a solitary figure wearing futuristic razor glasses, a rainbow-colored shirt, floral pants, checkered sneakers, and a single glove stands next to his boombox in the middle of a city square. A dog with a matching bejeweled glove lays on his back in front of the boombox on a piece of cardboard as though caught mid-performance. Subtle, surreal elements reveal themselves upon closer inspection.
Each painting in Cultivating Dreams is marked by intricate, technicolor patterns that emulate the contours of the vivid dreams the artists have said that they often share as twins. Drawing on subject matter from the fields of astronomy, art history, and music, the works feature a range of characters, including a dream traveler, a rocket man, a moon goddess, and a venus.
Each painting features a single figure, each of them framed within an architectural structure. The Moon depicts a woman wearing a headpiece that resembles the celestial object. Her floral purple and blue dress is adorned with a green bib and pendant that features a view of a house in a field and a lighthouse––a recurring motif. Her hands are crossed over the top of a planet surrounded by colorful rings, set against an ethereal, vibrant blue skyscape.
This exhibition exemplifies OSGEMEOS’ ability to create worlds, within worlds, within worlds, that nonetheless touch on a multitude of personal and global references. Like many of their exhibitions, Cultivating Dreams transforms the gallery space into a multi-layered experience designed to provoke the sense of awe and wonder encountered in a lucid dream state.
Cultivating Dreams is on view concurrent to Talk to Nature, an exhibition of new work by San Francisco-based artist Barry McGee, who has maintained a collaborative friendship with OSGEMEOS since the early 90s when they first met in Brazil. Together, the complimentary exhibitions present a microcosm of contemporary life.