Beacon Gallery is proud to feature the work of Brazilan multidisciplinary artist, Raquel Fornasaro from June 2 – July 20, 2023, for her exhibition, Cerol (pronounced sid-oh for non-Portuguese speakers). Cerol is made from hand-crushed powdered glass that Brazilians adhere to kite strings. Once airborne, cerol, turns kites into fighters where these illicit razor-sharp glass-coated strings slice anything in their path. This competitive, highly dangerous, and illegal pastime among Brazilian youth takes the abandoned detritus of the street and turns it into something both playful and threatening.
The playful and threatening nature of cerol reflects Raquel Fornasaro’s work with its contradictory nature. She evokes the joy of childhood, but also the surreal and dangerous role of consumerism, industrialization, and societal mores. Each installation, glass sculpture, plastic accumulation, and painting by Fornasaro evokes this juxtaposition. What happens when an Amazonian woman becomes an influencer on Instagram? Or when five months of her family’s waste morphs into a large ball? What happens when cerol is made into sculptures of monkeys or when children transform into larger-than-life characters occupying their own alternate realities?
Raquel Fornasaro, Wise Monkeys, wood, coconut and glass, 2022
In addition to the exhibition’s opening on Friday, June 2nd, mark your calendars for Thursday, June 22 at 6PM for a virtual Artist Talk with Fornasaro and art historian and Senior Lecturer at SMFA Tufts, Dr. Claudia Avolese. The event is free and will be hosted over Zoom.
For information on the program and to learn more about the gallery please visit – www.beacongallery.com.
