the armory show 2026

24 sep - 27 sep_2026

Galeria Raquel Arnaud is proud to present a solo booth dedicated to Almandrade (b. 1953, São Felipe, Bahia), one of the most original and rigorous voices in Brazilian contemporary art, at The Armory Show 2026.

This presentation introduces Almandrade to the New York public at a defining cultural moment, coinciding with renewed international interest in the Brazilian neoconcrete and constructivist traditions illustrated by Hélio Oticica’s current exhibition at the Dia Art Foundation. Active since the 1970’s Almandrade is an architect, poet, and visual artist based in Salvador, Bahia, who has spent over five decades building an oeuvre of remarkable coherence, one that dissolves the boundary between poem and image, sculpture and sign, silence and meaning.

Working with an extreme economy of means, his practice absorbs the legacies of Concrete Poetry, the Poema/Processo movement, and Conceptual Art, transforming them through a distinctly Brazilian sensibility. His visual poems, sculptures, and objects operate as what critics have called “visual aphorisms” minimal, enigmatic, and charged with layered meaning. From sealed envelopes sent through the postal service during the military dictatorship to precisely constructed three-dimensional objects in wood and steel, each work invites the viewer to reconstruct the process of its making.

The booth will bring together a focused selection of works spanning visual poems, paintings and sculptures, offering a comprehensive portrait of an artist whose influence on Brazilian visual culture is immeasurable, and whose universal language is long overdue for international recognition.