“Untitled”

Beginning his career as an artist in the 1970s, Soares worked primarily with photographs, installations, and performances. He was a member of the Arte/Ação group, which investigated possible developments for conceptual art. His most recent research establishes relationships with space and perspective, often creating distortions and optical illusions. He has exhibited his work in six editions of the São Paulo International Biennial, the Städtische Kunsthalle München, and the Bronx Museum, among others. His work is part of the collection of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (MAC) at USP and the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) in São Paulo, and has won awards such as the 16th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art at MAM/SP.

Pontos de vista, a 1973 work presented at the São Paulo Biennial, was emblematic in Genilson's career. The work, the result of a partnership with Lydia Okumura and Francisco Iñarra, who formed the "Team Three", occupied the corners of Niemeyer's building in order to integrate with the modernist architecture. Later, forming the duo Arte/Ação with Iñarra, Soares would develop interventions under the motto "to document is to express". The artists acted clandestinely, mainly in museums, and the photographs of these ephemeral interventions became the testimony of the work.

According to Aracy Amaral, “Manipulator of spaces that became illusory, particularly when photographed in intriguing ambiguity, Genilson works in close articulation with architectural projects, valuing drawing as a defining feature of special areas, with color appearing as a pale complement in reliefs that he now creates using the wall as a support, or in objects to which he incorporates diverse materials such as wood, eucatex and copper. And in this presentation on the wall he remains consistent in the relationship of his creations with the environment.”