“Trinca Trio”

Barrão's work emerged in the 1980s and was made up of the inventive appropriation of everyday objects. The artist inverts the original meaning of objects, always with humor, irony and poetry.

One of the main focuses of his work is the sculptures made with ceramic pieces and glazed porcelain from various sources that the artist has collected over the years. Fragments of plates, cups, vases and animals are composed in an ingenious, entirely manual configuration, forming new hybrid beings, giving new meaning to these objects with grace and unpredictability.

Between 1983 and 1991, he was part of the group “6 Mãos” with Ricardo Basbaum and Alexandre Dacosta, developing activities with videos, performances and objects. In 1995, he founded the group “Chelpa Ferro”, together with Luiz Zerbini and Sergio Mekler. Still active today, this collective delves into sound-visual experiences and participates in exhibitions and performances in museums, cultural spaces and festivals.

Barrão has several solo and group exhibitions under his belt. He held his first solo show, “Televisão”, in 1984, at the Galeria Contemporânea. In the same year, he participated in the exhibition “Como vai você, geração 80?” held at the Escola de Artes do Parque Lage, in Rio de Janeiro. In 1990, he received the “Brasília de Artes Plásticas” award.

In 2010, he participated in the "Próximo Futuro" project at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in Portugal. In 2012, his works were exhibited at Galeria Fortes Vilaça, in São Paulo, and at the Aldrich Museum, in the United States, with the project “Chelpa Ferro”. In 2022, he presented “FALA COISA”, a dialogue between unpublished works by Barrão and Josh Callaghan, an American artist, at Carpintaria (RJ).

Barrão has works in important public collections, such as the Pinacoteca of the State of São Paulo and the MAM – Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo.