DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM is pleased to present ÁL VARO TAVARES D’GUILHERME’s (b. 1992, Luanda, Angola; lives and works in Berlin) debut solo show with the gallery. Titled No church wild, the exhibition opens Friday, October 27, 6–8 PM and is on view through December 9. It includes a new series of large-format acrylic and oil compositions on canvas and a mirrored installation and drawing reflecting the hanging in the main gallery space.

D’Guilherme identifies as part of a Neo Brut movement—a cocktail of New Brutalism and art brut—creating visual landscapes, tablescapes, and nightscapes depicting city life in Berlin while also taking inspiration from the substantial time he spent developing his practice while living and working in Lisbon, Portugal. The artist aims for his paintings' purest form of creative expression, blending rawness and precision. As the title No church wild, with its nihilistic implication of no meaning, value, or purpose in the world suggests, D’Guilherme’s work thrives without strict labels, including devalued art-historical references and layered iconography, as in the title piece, which feels like a slick apped-out smartphone screen reflecting on the world around us and how we navigate it with intuitive awareness and recklessness. His art and attitude resist conforming to predetermined narratives and locations, often manifested in words and short texts layered and tattooed into surfaces and materials pulled from varying unconventional sources.

“Writing, for me, is omnipresent. Writing is palpable in a textural way in my works, for example, through materials that protrude from the canvas, such as wood, that form letters or words. I refer to my poems as science and laws in space. But if you call it poetry, maybe some poets will get mad at me.”—Ál Varo Tavares D’Guilherme in conversation with Claire Koron Elat, 032C, 2022

On the occasion of the exhibition, the gallery will produce and publish a digital catalog with an essay from Boris Pofalla, available in November of 2023.