Ground Displacement

Opening on November 20 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
In partnership with Latin Groove.

A collection of unique photographs that contemplate movement, presence, and the human condition.

Photographer and filmmaker Alexandre Fortes presents Ground Displacement, a new exhibition of unique photographs exploring the notions of presence, territory, movement, and belonging.

Through a temporal and geographical fragment of the artist’s career, the exhibition draws on the visual power of Brazilian landscapes and ways of life to overturn the usual perception of occupation and displacement:

Human beings do not occupy the Earth, nor do they move across it: it is the Earth that occupies and moves the lives of its beings.
The Being is a creation of the Earth, heir to its vast spectrum of physical and spiritual possibilities, and its many intangible conditions.
As we begin to understand this almost cosmic dynamic, our perception of the vastness of the space we inhabit becomes clearer, and the idea of measuring or transforming it becomes meaningless.

This idea takes visual form in the perspective chosen by the photographer: vast natural spaces traversed by a faint, almost silent human presence.
Scenes unfold where ambiguity arises between solitude and communion, movement and stillness, grandeur and smallness.
During this period, Alexandre Fortes transforms a displacement that was naturally imposed upon him into a body of work dedicated to the Earth and those who inhabit it.

As a visual counterpoint, the exhibition features the series Ceci N'EST PAS une fête ("This is NOT a party"), a collection of works revealing the ripple effects of a popular idea that fuels the heightened sense of a brief disconnection from daily life.
Through a collective intensity born from decades of social repression, this fleeting interruption becomes an opportunity to transgress reality. The objects, people, and stories that shape society’s trajectory are visibly deconstructed and naturally reorganized through these images.
This series recounts the moment when the photographer is absorbed by the crowd moving through the Ipanema neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro in 2007. An entirely unexpected parade swirls rapidly around him, sweeping up everyone in its path, occupying public spaces, and forcing citizens to quickly adapt to find their way through. Around each street corner, normalcy is torn apart, with no chance of recomposing itself until the end of this brief moment.

Artistic Approach

I explore architecture through art. This artistic intervention is not a mere formal proposal, but a speculation on artistic things in the world. My creation allows the architectural work, as an individual, to appear in reality.

My work is neither artistic architecture nor architectural art. It enables embodied architecture, the theme of my work, and phantasmic architecture, its methodology. Buildings, imbued with fantasy, become incarnated in the world.

For this incarnation, I explore a speculative approach on various surfaces, where I arrange architectural elements. Through the combination of lines and monochrome or limited-color surfaces, individual objects manifest themselves both artistically and architecturally.

I aim for each building, created in resonance with my artistic intention, to vibrate with the viewer. These objects, coexisting rather than subservient to humans, open new visions of coexistence and its partners.

This perspective is inspired by visionary architecture and paper architecture. As an artist-architect, I seek to transcend these traditions through artistic speculation to create an art-architecture where both fields resonate together.

My small-format works (4 x 6 inches) illustrate this speculation. A single object reveals its essence, substance, and existence. In the triptych, each element, distinct yet connected, exists in mutual resonance on the same plane. The architectural elements present continue to unfold here and now, to coexist with you.