Osgemeos
About:
OSGEMEOS (b. 1974, São Paulo, Brazil; live and work in São Paulo), translated as “the twins” in Portuguese, is a collaborative art duo comprised of twin brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo. As children, the brothers developed a distinct way of playing and communicating through artistic language, but it was with the invasion of hip-hop, and the explosion of Brazilian culture during the 1980s that OSGEMEOS began to use art as a way of sharing their dynamic and magical universe with the public. Combining traditional, folkloric, and contemporary elements of Brazilian culture with graffiti, hip-hop, music, dreams and international youth culture, the artists have created an expansive body of work that includes murals, paintings, sculpture, site-specific installations, and video. They use a symbolic visual language often inspired by their dreams that, as twins, they claim to share. In addition to the use of bright colors and elaborate patterns, they are best known for their paintings that feature long-limbed yellow-skinned figures with thin outlines, enlarged faces, and simplified features. The yellow skin color indicates a universal figure, rather than a direct reference to a specific race or culture, which reflects the highly diverse population of Brazil and the world. The use of doors, canvas and mirrors, both literal—painting directly on discarded doors and incorporating reflective surfaces into their works—and as motifs, signal access to another realm or an entry point to the psyche, pulling viewers into their surreal and chimerical world.
San Francisco, 2013
Sao Paulo, 2007
New York
Stockholm
Mattress Factory, 2015
Solo exhibitions of OSGEMEOS’ work have been organized by The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2018); Museu Casa do Pontal, Rio de Janeiro, (2015); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2012); Berardo Collection Museum, Lisbon (2010); and Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands (2007). Select group exhibitions and biennials featuring their work include Everything you are I am not: Latin American contemporary art from the Tiroche DeLeon Collection, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ; Apreensões e Objetos do Desejo: obras doadas pela Receita Federal ao MNBA, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro (2015); Giants at the Vancouver Biennale (2014); Gigantes por su propria naturaleza, Institut Valéncia d’Art Modern, Valéncia, Spain (2011); Art in the Streets, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2011); Viva la Revolucion: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA (2010); and When Lives Become Form: Creative Power from Brazil, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2008). Their work is in numerous international public collections, including The Frank-Suss Collection, London; Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo; Museu de Arte Brasileira, São Paulo; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.
Major public commissions include HangarBicocca, Milan (2016); Parallel Connections, Times Square Arts: Midnight Moment, New York (2015); Wynwood Walls, Miami (2009); Tate Modern, London (2008); and Creative Time, New York (2005).