Brazilian-born twins Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, widely known as Os Gêmeos, are a major force in contemporary and urban art. Their creative collaborations, manifesting as surreal paintings and large-scale public installations, are imbued with a strong sense of vitality and generously provide the viewer with an inlet into their collective imagination. It is in this unique realm that the brothers’ immediate surroundings – particularly in their neighborhood in São Paulo, Cambuci – undergo a magical artistic transformation. The narrative elements of their work draw inspiration from their everyday cosmopolitan lives, synthesized with imagery culled from rural Brazil, landscapes, and folklore.
Its fantastical color palette and psychedelic motifs render Landscape a quintessential Os Gêmeos dreamscape, a pastiche of hallucinatory fervor. Despite its obvious two-dimensionality, the painting’s surface is camouflaged by a backdrop of prismatic luminosity. Draped in orid fabric, the central figure traverses our visual field by boat among a sea of bobbing heads. The otherworldly subject matter ignites our imaginations. The ocean of yellow and brown monotonous faces through which our traveler sails his course represents sweeping possibilities.