One of Brazil’s leading galleries, representing 42 international artists, Galeria Fortes, D’Aloia & Gabriel was founded in 2001 in São Paulo where it now has two spaces. The third location in Rio will allow the gallery to expand its researches and its exhibition program. In addition to this expansion, the gallery has undergone a name change after deciding to make Alexandre Gabriel, who has has been part of the gallery since its inception, a partner. The alteration also takes into account the new family name of Alessandra D’Aloia — formerly Vilaça.
For D’Aloia and Marcia Fortes, the idea to open a third space in Rio had been in the pipeline for a long time, but the perfect opportunity arose when the gallery was invited to participate in a new cultural and gastronomic center to be established in a former Jockey Club at Rua Jardim Botânico. The 3,230-square-foot space, named Carpintaria (Carpentry Workshop) after the building’s original function — has been beautifully renovated by Pedro Évora and Pedro Rivera from Rua Arquitetos and overlooks the city’s mountainous surrounds. It sits in a little complex of restaurants, bookshops and other galleries.
The two part exhibition "A Song for Rio," which explores the relationship between visual arts and music, inaugurates the new space. This exhibition embodies the gallery owners’ desire for the Rio space to be “a place for dialogue between different forms of artistic expression” as specified in a press release. Twenty artists or groups of artists have been selected by independent Los Angeles curators Douglas Fogle and Hanneke Skerath, including Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans who is showing a musical sculpture, Bruce Conner, whose series of photographs explores the punk movement in 1970s America, and Brazilian artist Paulo Garcez, who looks at the associations between drawing, writing, and the graphic representation of music.
The exhibition’s first instalment runs through January 28, 2017, and the second part runs from February 11 through April 1, 2017. A representative of the gallery has added that further programming is yet to be confirmed.
