The legendary Brazilian street-art duo created a psychedelic immersive dreamworld for a fantastical show at Lehmann Maupin.
Opening with a full house last Saturday at Lehmann Maupin gallery, the Brazilian duo OSGEMEOS’ latest endeavor takes us to a psychedelic universe named Tritrez, where temporalities and culture collide. Drawing inspiration from different fields of human knowledge and creativity—from astronomy, art history and music—the paintings in the show are characterized by vibrant colors and mesmerizing textures and patterns, enhancing the symbolism of the surreal characters that inhabit this dreamscape. In the alienness of their long-limbed yellow-skins, OSGEMEOS’ subjects fluctuate in a multicolored and multi-sensory dimension, immersed in the power of their imagination and spirituality, which they let expand beyond the physical limits of their bodies. Yellow is significant because the artists often dream in the hue; as they explain, the color “has been a very spiritual color for us since we started drawing. When we drew at our mother’s house, the Sun would come through the windows, and the studio would become yellow. So we always found it mystical, peaceful, and harmonious.” The yellow skin also turns them into universal figures that avoid racial and cultural identification and reflect the highly diverse population of Brazil and today’s global society.
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Among those characters, we can identify different symbolic profiles that appear to revive tarots or other ancestral and mythological archetypes long used by humanity at different latitudes to explain the mystery of the universe. Inspired by the Greek goddess, timeless beauty and fertility symbol, A Vênus (The Venus) (2023) depicts a woman dressed in a sequined purple turtleneck and bright green and yellow floral pants. Relaxing comfortably in a giant scallop shell and casually holding a large pearl in her right hand, the figure is reminiscent of Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1485), but with a much more hip and contemporary aesthetic turn. Further, the show O Sol ao Encontro da Lua (The Sun Meeting the Moon), 2023, portrays instead a lady with a large hat and hanging red lanterns who appears to look much more to the East. Combining elements of Chinese culture with South Asian, she’s slowly diving and becoming all in one with a pink lake as she floats against a reddish suspended sky, confidently confronting the viewer.
The central artwork in the show is an ambitiously monumental temple facade inhabited by highly symbolic figures standing, respectively, on the two side altars, The Moon (2023) and The Sun (2023)—timeless deities we find across cultures in the primordial times of our civilization. The Moon stands hieratically in a regal floral purple and blue dress in front of a celestially ethereal background, standing as a symbol of hope or of an existential direction we must find. Meanwhile, the Sun appears down-to-earth in his solar headpiece and a floral red and blue shirt, standing much more casually and shyly than its counterpart, with arms dangling at his sides and toes turned inward. On top, a strangely prophetic figure towers over them, glowing with pure white light as it takes to his human costume, perhaps alluding to the possibility of regeneration of the spirit in another dimension. On the ground level, two figures of an ordinary man and a priestess, seemingly in esthesis, are standing at the two sides of what appears to be a portal dominated by a mysterious crystal emanating energies. In a syncretic aesthetic that blends references to ancient Egypt and ancient Greece with references to India and the Middle East, the entire installation conveys this mysterious sense of sacrality and prophecy—perhaps addressing the need for a new source of existential and spiritual meaning that seems to characterize today’s society.
Portals, mirrors and doors are present throughout the entire show, suggesting possible access to another realm or an entry point to the psyche as the artists invite the viewers to enter their surreal and chimerical world. Another gem of the show, which creates a parallel temporal dimension, is a small record studio, the gallery, built inside the gallery: here, OSGEMEOS’ visual imagery encounters a rich repertoire of pioneering music that has accompanied their creative journey. The gallery’s visitor is encouraged to explore and get lost in piles of vinyl from around the world while a record player nostalgically revives vintage tunes.
Overall, the exhibition appears to be an ode to the subconscious’s imaginative and creative power, unlocking the possibility of parallel worlds and opening up a deep universe inside to unlock a vast universe within us. By transcending boundaries between the body and space, reality and fiction, the duo envisions a dimension where anything is possible, fostering a sense of escapism, which is, however, already incubating the seeds for alternative futures. As described by Hirshhorn associate curator Marina Isgro: “In their view, worldbuilding—whether it takes the form of participating in a subculture or visualizing the contours of Tritrez—is less about pure escapism than about creating a shared space for self-expression and human connection.”
“We like to allow people to play with their imaginations—to see what they want to see. We want people to fly away when they visit our work.”—Gustavo Pandolfo to Oscar Holland for CNN Style.
The multilayered experience they have created in the gallery exemplifies their ability to create worlds within worlds while touching on many personal and global references. This immersive experience leaves the visitor with genuine wonder and awe and conveys an important message of multiculturalism, celebrating the universal creative power of human minds. A universal theme that will resonate with all who experience the exhibition.
OSGEMEOS, which means “the twins” in Portuguese, is a collaborative art duo comprising twin brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo. They began their careers in the 1980s at the height of the hip-hop and street movement, and they built their world amid the transgressive world of urban graffiti on the streets of their São Paulo neighborhood, Cambuci. This formative period for the artists inspires numerous works throughout the exhibition and their entire artistic production, which freely combines traditional, folkloric and contemporary elements of their Brazilian culture with iconography from graffiti, music, and international youth culture.
This solo exhibition at the gallery precedes the artists’ first U.S. museum survey exhibition, “OSGEMEOS: Endless Story,” which will be on view at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden from September 29 through August 3, 2025.
“OSGEMEOS: Cultivating Dreams” is on view at Lehmann Maupin, 501 West 24th Street, New York, through August 16.
