Angela Angela Detanico e Rafael Lain

Angela Detanico (1974, linguist) and Rafael Lain (1973, typographer), form a duo of artists currently living and working in Paris. Both Brazilians, born in Caxias do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, began working together in 1996 and the unique work they have been exhibiting regularly since 2001, explores issues related to language and representation as well as their limits and possibilities. 

Their conceptual pieces are characterized by a rigorous and poetic, elegant and minimalist formalism. They constantly seek new forms and means of creation, graphic, plastic and sound expression, using the most basic or advanced technologies to create installations, visual, sound or textual pieces. They belong to the legacy of the Brazilian modernist vanguards, such as concretism and visual poetry.

More specifically, they promote a subtle questioning of conventional modes of representation, the role of language in society, the relationships between sign and meaning: they trigger a reflection on the reading codes that guide our ways of life, for example through alphabets, cartographies or calendars. They develop scientific, mathematical and literary research processes around the representation and writing systems of time, space, memory and infinity. In this sense, besides questioning conventional systems of representation and codification, they create new systems, use and invent codes that make their works stimulating games of interpretation and creativity. The playful, and sometimes ironic, dimension is an unavoidable aspect of their work.

They received the Nam June Paik Award in 2004. They represented Brazil at the Venice Biennale in 2007, participated in the 26th and 28th Biennales of São Paulo. Their works have been translated into different languages and exhibited in several countries - CCS Bard Hessel Museum (USA), Jeu de Paume and Musée Zadkine (France), Pampulha Art Museum (Brazil), Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (Spain), ICC (Japan), MALBA (Argentina), Camberwell College of Arts (England), among many others. They recently presented solo exhibitions at the Museu Colecção Berardo (Lisbon), SESC Pinheiros (São Paulo), Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon), Kyoto Art Centre and at the Fundação Iberê Camargo, in Porto Alegre. They are also represented in several public and private collections.

Catarina Boieiro