In June 2007, Templon gallery opened a new space with an exhibition of twelve drawings by Tunga. Due to the great interest brought up by the exhibition, the gallery asked Communic’Art agency to produce a catalogue of the exhibition.

The new edition of the Tunga catalogue is now available ! The hardcover catalogue presents the previously unseen erotic drawings by Brazilian artist Tunga.

Made with pastel on 44 x 54 cm sheets of paper, the drawings stand between primitive images and contemporary choreography in which the interpetration of body fagments and huge mouths form an ambiguous orgy.

55 year old Tunga (José de Barros Carvalho e Mello e Mourao) is considered as a major contemporary artist in Brazil.

He is mainly known for his sculptures which integrate performances, poetry and installations. A spectacular exemple of which was exhibited in 2005 under the Louvre’s pyramid. Often recurring to fiction and myth in his compositions, the freedom and luxury of his works evoke the baroque period.

With this previously unseen series, Tunga reveals a rare and intimate side of his work. The drawings are not studies for future sculptures, on the contrary, like the writing of poetry or an intimate journal, they condense fantasies and plastic interrogations.

Drawn on chiffon paper, their lines explore issues of scale, volume and imprint with a reapropriation of the recurrent motifs of his work : alchemy, metamorphose, tension, attraction-repulsion…

The tooth appears as a leitmotiv, representing either genitals or teats, it becomes a symbol of an archaic sculpture
for the artist. First mineral secretion of the body, it evokes either childhood or body transformations but also the
primitive fascination for complex structures.

For this publication, Catherine Millet (art historian and author) wrote an original text on this series of drawings.

This catalogue is distributed by le Comptoir des Indépendants in 300 bookstores in France, including 50 specialized with an Art section.

The catalogue will be listed in over forty (40) professional databases and online bookstores, including Fnac, Amazon and Dilicom.