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Before becoming an artist, Lucas Simões worked as an architect. He has long been interested in the promises, failures, and whiteness of modern architecture.

“The history of the modern architecture is written by white men, all its goals and the amount of failures of this political and social instrument, were historically ruled by them.”

“White Lies” is the tile for this new series of six column-like sculptures made from concrete and paper piles. The six pieces are arranged in a grid, as if they were pylons for an imaginary building in the process of being built or demolished. Paper and concrete seem to cascade toward the ground or climb skyward in a regular pattern, frozen a moment before each pillar topples. The severe concrete elements are inspired by the post-modern movement, Brutalism, architecture and contrast sharply with the thin paper that supports it.

Simões’s work is about buildings—their stability and failure, the promises their architects make and the consequences of their existence. The idiom in the title of the show, White Lies, implies a certain harmlessness. But thinking about the phrase in terms of race, instead, encourages a reconsideration of modern architecture, the people at its helm, and its effects on the world.

 

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