13 Oct 2009

Antonio Dias at Daros Exhibitions, Zurich

'Anywhere Is My Land' is Switzerland's first major solo exhibition of works by Brazilian artist Antonio Dias.

Born in 1944, Dias began to make a name for himself in the 1960s with ironic social critique in the form of drawings and assemblages bearing the traces of Pop Art. His playfully existentialist approach to such topics as eroticism, sex and political oppression allowed him to go well beyond the faithful reproduction of a world of goods and commodities. Dias left his homeland, which was in the grip of a military dictatorship at the time, in 1966 for Europe and spent the 1970s, for the most part in Milan, creating a multimedia conceptual oeuvre replete with formal elegance in which political topics are interwoven with reflections on central issues in art and personal impressions.

His art is never one-dimensional; rather, it is reliably sensuous, erotic, socially partisan, always open and playful, driven by subversive energy and sporting an ironic glint in its eye. The artist simply will not be pinned down, preferring instead to indulge himself in experiments involving a wide range of techniques and materials as he lays bare an endless series of semiotic levels. Dias has inscribed himself with ease on the cultural scene of his native Brazil, among whose leading artists he has long since numbered.

For the first time ever, an exhibition focuses on two decisive phases – the 1960s and the 1970s – in Dias' creative life. 'Anywhere Is My Land' affords a comprehensive view of a corpus that, although little known to date, is of considerable significance to art history, and which surprises and fascinates with its freshness and relevance.