Exhibition - Roradodim

The exhibition "Roradodim" takes as its starting point the poetic phrase "roses outside the garden" (rosas fora do jardim), raising the figure of the rose to the condition of an allegory for existence itself. Pedro Matsuo's recurring gesture of incorporating this flower into his production goes beyond the representation of formal beauty: it operates as an investigation into vital duality. In his work, the vibrant transience of the petals and the blunt roughness of the thorns rub against each other to render the inseparable entanglement of affection, pain, and the subject's ongoing reconstruction.

The canvases that make up the exhibition "Roradodim" carry an exhibition history of their own. Originally conceived for the show "The Matsuo Happy Bars Plastic Light Show," the works were activated in near darkness through photoluminescent pigments. In that inaugural presentation, the darkened room functioned as the ideal habitat for these pictorial roses, which emerged from the obscurity as vibrant, self-sufficient presences.

Recontextualized in the current exhibition space, however, the canvases now inhabit a fixed ambient light, undergoing a fundamental shift in how they are received. Removed from their original dim habitat, the works lose the immersive atmosphere of that earlier presentation and give way to an analytical reading of the painting: under continuous light, the material, the layers of color, and the precision of detail reveal themselves with anatomical clarity before the viewer.

This shift in staging and lighting puts the public's perception under tension, offering multiple regimes of visibility for the same body of work. Moving from darkness into continuous light, the canvases not only reveal mechanical and chromatic specificities previously hidden, but also invite the viewer into an active exercise of reinterpretation. Ultimately, "Roradodim" turns the physical relocation of the works into a poetic synthesis: removing the roses from their original garden ceases to be a mere spatial rearrangement and becomes, instead, a reflection on fragility, resilience, and the ongoing reconfigurations of existence.