Osgemeos Rocked Brazil. Can the Graffiti Twins Take New York?

 

Their street murals, monumental sculptures, intricate drawings and vivid paintings pop up at Lehmann Maupin gallery on the eve of their Hirshhorn debut.

 "An old class photo hangs nearby, the brothers and the other 28 students all dressed in their blue and white school uniforms.

In it, they look to be about five years old, the same age they were when they started telling their parents about Tritrez, a place they describe in a similar way to heaven: they feel they lived there before they were born and say they will return to it one day when they die. “We’ve always had this strong spiritual connection with Tritrez and with each other,” Otávio said. It is, in a sense, their origin story — it explains where they came from, making a tumultuous entrance as premature babies — a magical world they wanted to replicate and share with others.

“It’s not a religion, but it’s something that has this strong link to our beginning as well as to our destiny,” Gustavo said. “It’s one life divided between two people.”

At the Hirshhorn, the pair are creating a gallery dedicated solely to Tritrez. In it will be everything from their first childhood iterations of the dreamlike world, to “The Tritrez Altar,” a rainbow-colored structure housing sculptures of their trademark characters that will be shown outside Brazil for the first time.

“The more you see of their work, the more you realize they are actually translating their inner world to the outer world,” said Melissa Chiu, the museum’s director. “It’s this impulse that they have to share. I think that’s what really makes them, in some ways, that rare kind of artist for whom categories are irrelevant.”"

READ REPORT By Jill Langlois