On 27 February the most complete retrospective exhibitions by the Campana brothers is beginning at CCBB Rio. The exhibition, with 200 works (from 1989 to 2009), was held at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, a German museum, where it was open until February 2010. It has been through European and Brazilian museums and finally it is the carioca’s turn.

This exhibition is focused on the ensemble of the brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana works; involving visual arts, furniture pieces and jewelry, displaying their strategies, inspiration sources and the varied approaches to design used by the brothers. Humberto creates objects as artisan and self instructed artist, and Fernando takes part as an experienced architect. Together, they ignore all conventions of traditional design, toying with the notions of functionality, and form their poetic objects from contradictory realities. 

The retrospective exhibition presents the largest part of the works by the Campana brothers, including private collections, institute’s collections and the Estúdio Campana Studio collection. It also displays the pieces created by both designers especially for “Anticorpos” (antibodies), developed in coordination with Vitra Design Museum. Among them, there are a number of experiments in papier-mache and a series of collages on paper that announce each theme in the exhibition. In the order such themes were assembled. 

“Antibodies” is divided in nine modules: Fragmentos (fragments), Objetos Trouvés (objects found), Nós (knots), Varetas (sticks), Híbridos (hybrids), Planos Flexionados (flexed flats), Objetos de Papel (paper objects), Agrupamentos (assembling), and Orgânicos (organics). Considered as central characters in international design, the Campana brothers use a visual language tied to Brazil, with an extraordinary contrast of colors, shapes and materials. By using tangled or entwined strings, cotton, plastic, copper, colorful bits of fabric, and prints in exuberant forms, their transform a chair into a work of art.

“Anticorpos” – Irmãos Campana

Centro Cultural do Banco do Brasil

Rua Primeiro de Março street, 66 - Downtown

Phone: (21) 3808.2020

From 27 February to 06 May, 2012

Tuesdays to Sundays, from 9h to 21h

Free Admission