Penna Prearo's 'Labirintos Revisitados' at Sesc Bom Retiro Showcases Recent Digital Photographic Constructions

Penna Prearo presents 49 recent photographs in 'Labirintos Revisitados' at Sesc Bom Retiro in São Paulo, curated by Agnaldo Farias with co-curation by Baixo Ribeiro. The exhibition focuses on works from the last three years, deliberately avoiding a retrospective despite the artist's five-decade career. Prearo constructs images that break from photography's documentary pact, creating saturated, textured works that resemble dreamlike scenes. He has long shifted his practice from capturing reality to building images through digital treatment, viewing the photographic image as a boomerang that hits the world and returns reverberating upon itself. At 71, and living with Parkinson's disease for about seven years, Prearo now uses a smartphone instead of a professional camera, adapting his process with a digital pen and tripod. He produces a finished image daily, maintaining a prolific output. The artist believes photography completely changed its axis early in his work, moving away from obvious parameters of documentation. Curators describe his images as capturing viewers' sight and perception, not representing anything common or simple.