Dual show by Tonico Auad Lemos and Goia Mujalli
Kupfer is proud to present A Living Confluence, a dual exhibition bringing together the works of Tonico Lemos Auad and Goia Mujalli. Over the course of three weeks in October, the gallery will be host to a dialogue between wooden sculpture, textile and painting, exploring the porous boundaries between material transformation, organic forms, and interior worlds.
The exhibition title A Living Confluence evokes a meeting and mixing of two currents; and the space of possibility that opens up when elements traverse their boundaries. Both artists’ works invite the viewer to consider them as living systems or manifestations of organic life, rather than inert objects; inhabiting a permeable zone where wood meets thread, where timber meets with painted cells, where negative spaces and interstices draw connective lines between the materials’ shared cellular origins and intelligence. The title also hints at shared conceptual ground: both artists work with imaginative transformation (of found objects or vegetal forms) and employ layering and reconfiguration. A Living Confluence thus functions as a lens for viewing this exhibition as a space of ongoing negotiation, where form, matter, memory and imagination meet.
Tonico Lemos Auad will present a group of floor sculptures together with wall-based wooden pieces. Made with reclaimed wood, his totem-like sculptural works also integrate textile elements (handmade ropes, threads, fragments of fabric) and interventions. The reclaimed wood still bears traces of its prior lives - beams or structural supports from earlier formations - and thus his process is attentive to what already exists in the material, including prior marks, traces, and histories. Repair, mending, and the idea of healing play a key role in these works. The interplay between warm, tactile textiles and solid, memory-laden wood generates a quiet intimacy, suggesting ecosystems of material life that are also manifestations of belief.
One of the most established Brazilian artists in the London scene, Tonico’a recent trajectory includes inclusion in the touring Material Worlds: Contemporary Artists and Textiles at Hayward Gallery. Solo exhibitions include Unknown to the World at Cample Line, Scotland (2021) and at Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo (2022) and Biblioteca (CRG, New York, 2016). His work is held in major collections including Tate, Zabludowicz, Instituto Inhotim, Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo and the FLAG Art Foundation. He is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery (UK) and Galeria Luisa Strina (Brazil).
Goia Mujalli will present a group of new paintings. Her practice is focused on painterly abstraction and the mutation of vegetal or cellular forms. Working across acrylic, embroidery, and abstract threaded lines, her paintings suggest worlds that flicker between the microscopic and the panoramic, the familiar and the uncanny. She evokes forms that feel like imaginary plants, fruits, or evolving organisms, through overlaps of color, gesture, surface texture, and negative space; an interplay between what is revealed and what is withheld. Threads and embroidery act as extensions of her painterly thinking, stitching surfaces into spaces of tension and flux. The works gesture toward emotional, energetic, or even frequency-based resonances beyond visible form.
Mujalli graduated in 2017 with an MFA (Painting) at the Royal College of Art, London and a BA at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2015. Selected solo shows include A Carne das Folhas (Galeria Mercedes Viegas, Rio de Janeiro, 2022) Flor de Papel (Essiccatoio Art Residency, Salento, Italy, 2021) Labyrinths (Galeria Mercedes Viegas, Rio, 2018). She has also exhibited at ARTRIO (Rio de Janeiro) and Art Brussels (with Patrick Heide Gallery). Recently she has had exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro and at the Brazilian embassy in London with The Dot Project. She is represented by Galeria Mercedes Viegas (Brazil).
Both artists will be launching a limited edition print to accompany the exhibition, made uniquely for Kupfer. Editions will go on sale online on the 8th October 2025.
