Instituto Rouanet, located in Tiradentes (Minas Gerais), is pleased to present the exhibition “Mechanics” by young photographer Lorenzo Beust from Rio Grande do Sul, as part of an initiative to invite the Mercosur Biennial for a partnership. Our goal is to offer the public in Minas a glimpse of what’s happening at the Biennial, simultaneously with its main edition in Porto Alegre, RS. This exhibition results from an important partnership between the Institute and the 14th Mercosur Biennial, one of the most significant contemporary art events in Brazil.
With the theme “Snap”, the Biennial takes place from March to June 2025, addressing life, movement, and metamorphosis. For the first time, it expands its boundaries to Minas Gerais with a simultaneous satellite exhibition in Tiradentes.
Instituto Rouanet (Tiradentes/MG) launches an unprecedented partnership with the Mercosur Biennial Foundation:
The exhibition “Mechanics”, by photographer Lorenzo Beust, comes to Tiradentes through a collaboration between Instituto Rouanet and the Mercosur Biennial.
Opening: Tuesday, March 25 at 6 PM
Location: Instituto Rouanet Gallery, Rua Direita 248, Tiradentes, MG
Sponsored by Itaú via the Rouanet Law, “Instituto Rouanet offers the Minas Gerais public a glimpse of what is taking place at the 14th Mercosur Biennial, one of Brazil’s leading contemporary art events,” highlights Adriana Rouanet, director of the Institute.
The exhibition in Tiradentes happens simultaneously with the Biennial in Porto Alegre, marking the first time the event expands into Minas Gerais. With the title “Snap”, the 14th Mercosur Biennial — curated by Raphael Fonseca — explores themes of life, movement, and transformation. In Minas, the institutional cooperation made possible this exclusive edition of the exhibition, adapted to the Institute’s space and co-curated by Raphael Fonseca and Francisco Moreira da Costa, curator of the Instituto Rouanet gallery.
The “Mechanics” exhibition by photographer and visual artist Lorenzo Beust engages with the physical space and the Institute’s mission to explore Brazilian identity. It also dialogues with the Biennial’s theme, “Snap”. “Through his lens, like many of the Biennial’s artists, safe places dissolve and the viewer is invited to question the images being observed,” says Raphael Fonseca.
At Instituto Rouanet, Lorenzo Beust presents a series of 28 images portraying elements such as horses, mechanical cows, workshops, and urban details that follow a mechanized logic. Within this narrative, his photography takes on a unique role — a metaphor for time with layered meanings that provoke positive unrest in the field of visual arts. His digital photography imports visual codes from glitch culture and car tuning aesthetics. Through them, the artist seeks to challenge the imaginary of the digital machine-body within a local tradition.
In the artist’s own words:
“Mechanics is a photographic investigation that began in 2018 in São Gabriel, the town where I grew up in the countryside of Rio Grande do Sul. It’s a study of rural and urban photographic approximations in the Gaúcho Pampas. I choose the horse and the mechanical cow as central objects, connected through city images that operate as both documentary and fiction. I seek to shift visual Gaúcho canons that glorify man’s presence in the fields. In doing so, photography affirms deviation. The urban-rural drift I capture aims to show the blurred limits between these two concepts, while also highlighting my own return to the city where I was raised and now record. On another level, there is a displacement of the horse-as-animal and the cow-as-machine, emphasized through car body paint, leather-as-canvas, and a gaze over the aesthetic choices of people who, like me, grew up there — though unlike me, they remain.”
“Lorenzo is part of a generation of photographers who push the boundaries of photographic imagery. He has a unique eye for framing the banal and the everyday scenes of the Pampas. The power of his photography lies in how he frames the trivial — a piece of window or a blanket hanging on a clothesline. By reframing these moments, he tells new stories through color and texture,” says Francisco Moreira da Costa, curator of the Rouanet Gallery.
The partnership between Instituto Rouanet and the Mercosur Biennial Foundation will also include other initiatives, such as a seminar in May in Porto Alegre focused on the crucial theme of cultural institution sustainability.
Adriana Rouanet, executive director of Instituto Rouanet, celebrates this partnership with the 14th Mercosur Biennial, emphasizing the shared commitment to diversity, sustainability, and social transformation through education and culture — values championed by public intellectuals Sergio Paulo Rouanet and Barbara Freitag, whose legacy now transcends through the work of Instituto Rouanet. This exhibition is just one of several initiatives sponsored by Itaú through Brazil’s Federal Culture Incentive Law (Lei Rouanet), supported by Fundação Itaú.
Since its opening as a cultural center in Tiradentes in October 2023, Instituto Rouanet has promoted various initiatives such as exhibitions, round tables, talks, cultural training workshops, art showcases, and artist residencies — supporting creative processes and enabling artistic expression across the spectrum of Brazil’s cultural diversity.
Located in the Rouanet family house in Tiradentes’ historic center (MG), the Institute is a cultural space open to both visitors and the local community — functioning as a museum, art gallery, and public library with over 15,000 consultation titles.
Instituto Rouanet
🌐 www.institutorouanet.org
📸 @instituto.rouanet
Instituto Rouanet is a private non-profit association whose mission is to inform, educate, and transform through culture. Its inspiration comes from the Enlightenment, cultural legacy, and public service of its founders: Barbara Freitag — sociologist, educator, and pedagogue — and Sergio Paulo Rouanet — diplomat, philosopher, former Minister of Culture, and author of the federal law that created PRONAC (National Program for Cultural Incentives), known as the Rouanet Law.
Info
Instituto Rouanet presents the exhibition “Mechanics” by Lorenzo Beust — 14th Mercosur Biennial
🗓 March 25 to June 30
📍 Instituto Rouanet – Rua Direita, 248 – Tiradentes, MG
🕒 Visiting hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 10 AM to 6 PM; Sundays, 10 AM to 1 PM
🎟 Free admission
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Fábio Gomides – (31)99693-2767
