San Francisco, CA - 111 Minna Gallery is pleased to announce “Metabiotics”, a solo exhibition by Brazilian artist Alexandre Orion in his first West Coast show. Orion’s combination of stencil painting and photography challenges the way painting and photography is combined and explores the limits of how art is represented and perceived.
Alexandre Orion's idea can be understood as an urban metaphor that goes beyond institutional limits and beliefs. He accomplishes this by utilizing three elements: stencils on city walls, passers-by, and a photograph.
He works by combining painting with photography on the walls of Sao Paulo City megalopolis into the day-to-day life of passers-by with a photographic eye that captures an exact moment in the real lives of the dispossessed, the ignored, the unimportant and the "normals" or, if you prefer, the poor, the prostitutes, the homeless and the "normals". This union is what makes his work unique.
He has no need to enhance his art with image editing software. His canvas is the street. He composes his photographs with stationary stencils on walls, and life on the move. He waits for the right moment. Life is ever changing, but some moments are eternal. The anonymous that had no value, become priceless
Alexandre Orion is 26 years old and was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He is an Rts graduate who has collaborated as an illustrator in many major Brazilian publications. He is a self-taught photographer who has been involved in the theory and practice of photography since 2001.