Dreamscapes for other narratives
Luiz Roque’s first mid-career survey

A regal Shiba Inu flies along the skyscrapers of Dubai in a private jet, a beautiful trans woman is examined by an android in a morgue-looking clinic, a luxurious resort spa becomes a drug den where guests allow their sexual fantasies to roam free—in his surreal videos, Luiz Roque constructs mesmerizing yet somewhat unsettling dreamscapes that entrance the viewer with ravishing imagery and simultaneously subvert the heteronormativity of dominant culture. KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin presents the first mid-career survey of the Brazilian artist. The exhibition borrows its title from the earliest work on display, the 2004 Estufa (Greenhouse), marking the starting point for exploring Roque’s artistic practice. Interestingly, the curator, Léon Kruijswijk, does not pave a chronological path, which is often the expected proceeding of a retrospective, but instead acknowledges Roque’s own heterogeneous methodology by mixing thematically and formally diverse works from different periods in the same rooms. This elimination of a linear narrative extends the diegetic world into the exhibition reality, allowing the artist’s wonderland to engulf the visitors. Like stepping through the looking glass, we enter a strange new world where art history is being queered.

The first room successfully sets the tone for the entire exhibition: dark, roughly painted walls, soft directional lighting for the artworks and labels, and an old-school rear-projection television on a low silver plinth (Image 1). Eeriness is in the air. On the screen, crows fly around a cemetery, bickering with each other. Then, we are taken to Tate Britain, to the hall with Henry Moore’s famous biomorphic sculptures. The Recumbent Figure (1938) appears in an intimate close-up—it is clearly the protagonist of this story. Upbeat house music gets louder and louder as a dancer covered head-to-toe in a black latex suit—an homage to Leigh Bowery, an influential queer performer in the London underground club scene of the 1980s—seductively interacts with a replica of Moore’s static creature.

 

Image 1: Installation view of the exhibition Luiz Roque – Estufa at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2024. Hostess, 2023; Hostess, 2024; Modern, 2014. 

In Modern (2014), a 16mm film transferred to digital video, the canonical monument, placed in the safety of one of the most important art institutions in the world, is brought back to life, its solid inviolability animated by flamboyant enticements. “I am interested in the history of art,” explains Roque in an interview with Kruijswijk, “but in a way that we can rethink it.”¹ A fascination with modernism is combined here with a will to challenge the homogeneity of its legacies. The museums are supposed to preserve all kinds of histories but most often members of LGBTQIA+ communities as well as those whose expression of gender identity and sexuality differs from the heteronormative are deprived of fair representation. Their lives and experiences are in danger of sinking into oblivion due to the years of institutional neglect and erasure. The sexual and the transgressive are then meant to revisit and undermine the canon, drawing our attention to the missing fragments.

But Modern is not the only work in the room. There are two ceramic pieces on the wall, both called Hostess (2023 and 2024), that immediately strike the eye as they seem to hover in the spotlight. The objects have a similar abstract shape, consisting of a tail-like curved triangle pointing downwards and a round, slightly concave segment on top of it. This minimalist form is reminiscent of a bathroom sign, although it is hard to tell whether the Hostesses can be gendered at all despite their name. More than anything, they look like monumentalized commas levitating in space, which creates an extraterrestrial atmosphere. The pair accompanies the dialogue between the two figures in the film, reciprocating its effort to place low and high culture, underground and canon, contemporary and historic together. The ceramics become a physical complement to the digital work, although created roughly a decade later.

 

Image 2: Installation view of the exhibition Luiz Roque – Estufa at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2024. Ano Branco, 2013; Liver Couture, 2024.

Aside from conceptual connections, however, how bizarre is it to combine video art and ceramics? They seem to be rather incongruous mediums. But then again, Roque does enjoy mingling the incompatible and juggling the controversial. Ceramics are his recent interest, and this is in fact the first time they are institutionally exhibited. These works are almost like living organisms convoying his videos but also exerting a strong independent presence. The entrance to the room with Ano Branco (White Year, 2013) is, for example, adorned with Liver Couture (2024)—raku and glazed ceramic pieces Frankenstein-ed together just like the main character of the video, who is about to be dissected and operated by a robot (Image 2). In another hall, a Super 8 film DAS MONSTER (The Monster, 2009) plays on a continuous loop, flanked by eight ceramics on the side walls. They do not directly respond to the projection, instead becoming little monsters, enigmas on their own. Shaped like industrial tools, masks, organs, tissues, skulls, and bone structures—Roque’s artifacts come alive to surprise and challenge the viewer. In contrast to the assertive rigidity, almost sanctity of Moore’s sculpture, these fragmented works emanate vulnerability and fragility. It is a striking curatorial decision to juxtapose the two mediums, thus compelling the viewer to look for unexpected relations within and between the individual works, which is ultimately characteristic of Roque’s own approach.

Image 3: Installation view of the exhibition Luiz Roque – Estufa at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2024. República, 2020; S, 2017; Clube Amarelo, 2024.