OSGEMEOS: THE REAL AND THE FANTASTIC
The Hirshhorn Museum will present the first US museum survey and largest US exhibition of work by identical twin brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo (b. São Paulo, Brazil, 1974), known globally as OSGEMEOS—Portuguese for “the twins.” The yearlong, full-floor presentation will bring together approximately 1,000 artworks, photographs, and archival materials to highlight the trajectory of their collaborative multidisciplinary practice, including the roots of their fantastical artistic language, inspired by their upbringing in urban Brazil.
OSGEMEOS: Endless Story will spotlight the artists’ playful combination of universal themes with magical elements drawn from their heritage, urban art and graffiti traditions, and shared imagination.
Featuring large-scale paintings on wood and canvas, monumental sculptures, and room-sized installations that incorporate light, movement, and music, Endless Story will fill the Hirshhorn’s sweeping third-floor galleries. To highlight OSGEMEOS’s interest in fusing the real with the fantastic, central place will be given to dreamlike worlds, including The Moon Room (2022), built specifically for exhibition spaces and featuring sound, colorful architecture, and custom wallpaper. The presentation also will include scores of rarely seen drawings illuminating the growth of OSGEMEOS’s creative practice, from the walls of their childhood home to freeways and building façades to global galleries, alongside documentation of their outdoor graffiti and murals.
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OSGEMEOS: Endless Story. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
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OSGEMEOS: Endless Story. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
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OSGEMEOS: Endless Story. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
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OSGEMEOS: Endless Story. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
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OSGEMEOS, Untitled (Zoetrope), 2014. Mixed media. 200 13/16 x 236 1/4 x 196 7/8 (510 x 600 x 500 cm), as installed in Lyrical, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2018-2019. Courtesy of Mattress Factory. © OSGEMEOS. Photo: Tom Little.
Endless Story frames OSGEMEOS’s origin story in São Paulo and introduces Tritrez, a mystical universe the artists invented as children and continue to populate with their colorful imaginings and signature large-headed figures. Sources of inspiration, such as their mother’s embroidery, American hip-hop, breakdancing and graffiti, life, nature, dreams, and sci-fi and the supernatural, as well as music, feature throughout the galleries. Many works have never been shown outside Brazil, including The Tritrez Altar (2020), a vast rainbow-colored structure housing sculptures of OSGEMEOS’s trademark characters. Other highlights include a colossal handmade zoetrope devised in 2014 that, when activated, animates OSGEMEOS’s world in the spirit of precinema days. In addition, more than 30 paintings from lenders across the United States demonstrate the breadth of the artists’ practice.
OSGEMEOS: Endless Story is curated by Marina Isgro, Associate Curator of Media and Performance Art at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, with the support of Curatorial Assistant CJ Greenhill Caldera.
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