Daniel Escobar - RH Gallery - January 17th 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

RH Gallery is pleased to present Fictitious Topographies, Daniel Escobar’s first solo
exhibition in the United States. The exhibition is comprised of new work from three series on Escobar’s interpretation of the urban landscape, specifically Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where the artist resides, and New York City. Escobar’s manipulation of maps, documents and images reflect an exploration of imaginary landscapes as opposed to real ones replicated in satellite imagery and maps.
In the series entitled Permeable (Up Close), Escobar extracts details from billboard advertisements that he perforates repeatedly and then layers to create new composite images. For The World, Escobar has produced a series of photographs depicting particular details of pop-up books that he made using promotional materials produced for the tourism industry. In Atlas of Urban Anatomy, he constructs three-dimensional fictional maps inside of a guidebook for Belo Horizonte using fragments of actual maps found in the book. These new maps are incongruous with actual maps of the same locations.
Escobar is a contemporary flâneur. In the vein of philosopher Walter Benjamin, the artist embarks on a kind of urban wandering by destroying what is known and accepted in order to introduce new possibilities of experience within that which has already become fact. Escobar’s pursuits have led to various forms of mapping urban conditions incorporating topographies featuring architectural structures and advertising billboards.
Daniel Escobar was born in 1982 in Santo Ângelo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He currently lives and works in Belo Horizonte. Escobar received his Bachelor of Visual Arts from the Arts Institute of the Federal University of the Rio Grande do Sul. Escobar has received numerous awards including the CNI/SESI Marcantônio Vilaça for the Arts, the Funarte Prize for Contemporary Art, Fiat Mostra Brasil, the Azores First Prize for Art and the 17th Annual Prize for Arts from the Munical of Porto Alegre. His work has been exhibited in numerous museums including the Goethe Institute in Porto Algre, the Lasar Segall Museum in São Paulo, the Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art, the Pampulha Museum of Art in Belo Horizonte and the Curtiba Museum of Contemporary Art. Escobar is represented in the collections of several museums including the Pamuplha Museum of Art and the Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art.