sebastián ferreira :
megalopolis
The gallery dedicates for the first time a monographic exhibition and a catalog to the contemporary brut artist Sebastián Ferreira.
Discovered by the gallery, this young paraguayan artist draws imaginary cities with graphite on paper. The exhibition megalopolis translates the urban concentration of the cities from which Sebastián Ferreira draws his inspiration. His cities are not linked to each other, but intertwined to form one, extended to infinity.
Ramiro Sebastián Ferreira Martinez de la Pera, known as “Seba,” born in Asunción (Paraguay) in 1981, is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at the age of 15. His early dream of a career as an architect becomes unattainable. Graphic production, which already occupied him as a child, then turns into one of the only bridges between his fertile imagination and a world he mainly experiences from the inside of his room, isolated. More than 400 artworks are thus born, carefully ordered, invisible to others until they are finished. The gallery shows his work in a solo show for the first time.
Following his diagnosis, Sebastián Ferreira’s taste for urban structures takes the sole direction of white paper, which he covers with a synthesis of cities–Buenos Aires, Granada and Cordoba among others, cities he has never visited. Indeed, the Internet is his other privileged bridge with the outside world: he finds there the numerous photographs that feed his creation, as well as magazine pages and postcard images. From this digital collection are drawn the real buildings that Ferreira sometimes includes in his imagined cities, mixing them with numerous urban elements such as roads, traffic lights and buses. These forms polarize a dense, insatiable and generous fascination for urban space
Ramiro Sebastián Ferreira Martinez de la Pera, known as “Seba,” born in Asunción (Paraguay) in 1981, is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at the age of 15. His early dream of a career as an architect becomes unattainable. Graphic production, which already occupied him as a child, then turns into one of the only bridges between his fertile imagination and a world he mainly experiences from the inside of his room, isolated. More than 400 artworks are thus born, carefully ordered, invisible to others until they are finished. The gallery shows his work in a solo show for the first time.
Text: Christophe Le Gac
Foreword: Christian Berst
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Sebastián Ferreira: Megalopolis, from June 15th to July 16th, 2023.