João Modé: CHÃO e [and CHAOS] + AQUI: Museu Universitário Solar Grandjean de Montigny | PUC-Rio | Gávea, Rio de Janeiro

Curated by: Nuno Crespo
Co-curated by: Luiz Camillo Osorio and Carlos Eduardo Félix da Costa

“CHÃO e|and CHAOS + AQUI”, by João Modé, is part of “Respiração”, the inaugural exhibition of ART CUT’26, currently on view at the Museu Universitário Solar Grandjean de Montigny at PUC-Rio. Created especially for the Triennial, the exhibition takes the Solar’s architecture, history, and distinctive characteristics as a starting point for an intervention that brings together matter, space, memory, and displacement.

Modé intervenes in the space using clay, a material present in the building’s own construction, while incorporating objects related to the Solar’s historical research. The intervention establishes a direct relationship between the architectural space and the processes of transformation and permanence that have shaped its history.

The project also presents “AQUI”, a work developed by the artist since 2009 from photographs taken during journeys and displacements since the late 1980s. Bringing together different moments and places, the work reflects on photography, space, time, and memory. The places recorded by Modé cease to function solely as geographical references and instead become spaces of affective memory and the construction of a poetic geography.

In “CHÃO e|and CHAOS + AQUI”, matter, architecture, image, and experience come together in an investigation of the relationships between place and displacement, presence and memory.

Watch the full video of AQUI.

The exhibition remains on view through November 15, 2026, with free admission.