ZÉH PALITO: CARS, POOLS & MELANIN

Perrotin New York is pleased to present Zéh Palito's first solo exhibition with the gallery, titled “Cars, Pools & Melanin”, consisting of new paintings and sculptures.

September 6 – October 19, 2024

“Drawing on the process of integration that took place in some U.S. states following Brown v. Board of Education (1952-1954), Palito envisions the swimming pool as a space of affirmation. This reference serves as a bitter reminder that, despite legal support, the end of segregation remains an incomplete process in countries marked by racism imposed by the colonial enterprise, such as the United States and Brazil.

Water serves as a symbolic marker of segregation, representing the purity sought by white supremacy. Consequently, in Palito’s paintings, the figures dominate his scenes with a commanding presence.

One of the most striking works reinterprets David Hockney’s iconic 1967 painting “A Bigger Splash”. Celebrated as a high point in Hockney’s engagement with the California dream and its bourgeois light and calm, Palito’s version features a Black female wearing a papaya-patterned bathing suit, materializing a figure not present in the original painting.”

“We discussed how the skins of the figures in his paintings are never rendered as continuous fields of color but always with fragmented patches of various shades of black and brown. How Black children continue to be mistreated by vendors in Brazil, mistaken for beggars—as if this were justifiable.

A national shame. In the context of Jardins, one of the country’s most segregated neighborhoods, it was evident that the fact of my being white and Zéh being Black made a difference. I left that lunch feeling that things are slowly changing in Jardins and that Zéh Palito’s generation of artists has a big contribution to that change.” — Rodrigo Moura Chief Curator at El Museo del Barrio, New York