Essay on Beauty

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First week of January 2025

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Monday morning. My gallerist calls me, asking to meet.

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Ricardo: Bruno, an exhibition dropped from the schedule, and I’d like your help in putting together a group show that mixes gallery artists with some names from outside…

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Bruno: Sure, Ricardo. Do you have any specific theme or topic in mind?

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Ricardo: I want you to read the text Vinicius wrote. It’s the gallery’s creative guideline for this year. I want Movimento to reconnect with the sensitive and the beautiful. I miss offering a more direct relationship with emotion in our exhibitions. I know other themes feel more urgent, but it’s important to maintain contact with the sublime. I want Movimento to go in that direction this year.

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Bruno: Ricardo, I’m in! I’ll enjoy curating this. Let’s make it a light, unpretentious, but elegant exhibition. I won’t go deep into academic conceptualization—let’s allow the selection of works to naturally guide the viewer’s interpretation. Few artists, a near-traditional display, you know... In a way, that could carry a subtle irony that I find appealing.

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Ricardo: I talked to Vinicius, and we think this will work. But Bruno, I really want you to participate as an artist too, OK? How do you envision the text?

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Bruno: Well… I think I can play with it. Use metanarrative—like a text within a text, structured as a conversation that externalizes the process of building an exhibition. It could be interesting to help the audience, artists, and students normalize and demystify curatorial work. This is a gallery, not an institution—the paradigms are different, and in some ways, so are the objectives. Good galleries help build their artists' careers, but we’re talking about the market, right? A gallery has to sell. But we’re not dealing with mere products—we’re dealing with something filled with history, sensitivity, and symbolism. And in this selection of works and artists, I’ll be focusing on what you asked me for: ‘BEAUTY.’ And I write it in quotes because I know there’s no single definition of beauty. I know it’s a relative concept, and I’d never fall into the trap of trying to define what is or isn’t beautiful. Instead, I’ll focus on the experience of enchantment—on the sublime when an individual encounters something special. Something that, no matter how simple, can leave a mark on us. You get what I mean?

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Ricardo: I think so.

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Bruno: When I stop to think about this sensation I want others to experience, a few very simple memories come to mind. For example, I remember when I was about eight years old, lying on the floor next to my parents' bed, watching dust particles dance in the morning beam of light that cut through the dark room through a gap in the curtains. I swear I can still feel the warmth of that light if I close my eyes and focus. The strangest thing is, I was so mesmerized that I didn’t even need to reach out for the light to touch me—at the right moment, it came to me. Art does that to us… Thinking about this is unlocking so many drawres inside me. IIn my early twenties, I went to a concert on Gaibu Beach, in Pernambuco.

It was already past midnight, and I was there with the UNE Biennial, surrounded by university students from all over the country. The tide was extremely low, the sea was calm. I walked into the water until the sound of the music became distant. I had gone far from the shore, yet the water still only reached my waist. I lay back and began to float. There I was, drifting, my ears submerged, feeling the bass from the music resonate through my body. The full moon, vain as ever, shone in the sky, illuminating my thoughts, while the salty sea breeze whispered against my wet skin. Back then, I had no religion, but to me, that moment was sacred—it was a connection with the divine. Nature was showing me the beauty of my own insignificance. Contemplating something of that magnitude changes you. Art does that too. I've watched Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty about fifteen times, and to this day, I cry like a child when it ends. I sob through the final scene of the boat on the river.

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Ricardo: That’s beautiful.

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Bruno: Thinking about what Vinicius wrote at the beginning of the gallery’s guidelines for this year: “...Galeria Movimento proposes a reflection on the formation of individual subjectivity,” I believe that’s what I’ll hold on to in this curatorship—the attempt to unearth the dormant intimate. Seeking subjective complicity with color, form, narrative, landscape, the city, memory, the body… but above all, with the other.

(A few moments of silence before a long sigh.)

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Art does that.

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Bruno Miguel, 2025

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(Gallery’s guideline for 2025)

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PRIVATE WINDOW

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Throughout 2025, Galeria Movimento aims to reflect on the formation of individual subjectivity by revisiting themes that explore sensitivity—through honest discourse and an approach that seeks to intimately connect artwork and spectator.

It is in this encounter that the power of creation resides—the awakening to oneself through a deep connection capable of transforming our understanding of the world. After all, what feels familiar resonates within our memories, bringing us back to the principles and values that drive us toward individual and, consequently, collective growth.

Poetry, as a form of resistance to automated life, emerges in this context as a channel for transformation. In a world where subjectivities are organized into spreadsheets, where unpredictability is erased and futures are hijacked, new imaginations become urgent. This new language—born from de-automation and the reclaiming of creative independence—thus becomes essential for the reconstruction of our individuality.

Thus, "Private Window" invites each of us to unveil our own selves, allowing the light of art to guide us through a process of rediscovery, inspiration, and resistance.

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Vinicius Fadel