For the 2026 edition of Material, the galleries Portas Vilaseca (Rio de Janeiro) and PASTO (Buenos Aires) join forces for the first time to present, together, works by Laura Códega and Randolpho Lamonier.
The proposal articulates a dialogue between two artists who, working from distinct geographies and visual languages, share a common sensibility: a strong formal autonomy with striking visual intensity, a concern for social issues, and a critical perspective on identity, representation and structures of power.
Through experimental materialities, both artists construct individual interpretations of Latin America’s history and contemporary realities, in which politics and intimacy intertwine.
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The work of Laura Códega (Campana, Buenos Aires, 1977) revisits episodes of social history through a vibrant visuality that challenges hegemonic forms of representation. Her practice, shaped by art, cinema, and journalism, constructs fictional allegories that interrogate the Hispanic-American condition from a non-Enlightenment perspective, bringing to the fore forgotten narratives, marginal characters, and behaviors that persist over time. At the fair, the artist presents a group of works made with banana on canvas and leather, in which a concern for moral, social, and religious aspects becomes evident, with particular emphasis on popular traditions, pagan beliefs, and peripheral mythologies.
In dialogue with this approach, Randolpho Lamonier (Contagem, MG, Brazil, 1988) addresses the Brazilian experience from an equally committed perspective. His works combine fragments of everyday life, materials charged with meaning, and compositions that evoke community bonds that are both fragile and resilient. In his pieces, the intimate and the political are interwoven within a raw aesthetic, where joy grows in direct proportion to misfortune. At the fair, the artist presents the series “Crónicas de Retalho“, “Fashionista Boys“, and “Bittersweet Haiku“, employing textiles as a political and poetic language.
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Info
Pasto & Portas Vilaseca at Material art fair
Laura Códega & Randolpho Lamonier
Booth E17 | 5–8 February 2026
Maravilla Studios, Mexico City
More information: material-fair.com
