Photo: Julia Thompson
Calambur is a project that was born out of a dialogue between two artist friends and a curator who is almost as distant as the two artists' own research. The friends work, the curator observes and does absolutely nothing, except give possibly useless tips, bring a different and benevolent look, but above all, he enjoys torturing the two artists. Our heroes suffer from the orgasm that the very act of creating causes them. The curator creates limits by imposing maximum freedom… there is no freedom if you are not aware of the limits of others… Calambur plays on different planes, dealing with exquisite dialectical, visual, formal problems of meaning and counter-meaning. Calambur tackles critical methodology head on and leaves no room for anything but the force of the images. Calambur could be a potato (a sweet one too), a fish, a perfume, a health condition, a weapon, a language, a country, a type of hug, a dialogue, a tribute, an experiment… Calambur is as fluid as its research. Calambur is sudden. Calambur is the paradox of life itself… it makes sense of the meaningless and endeavours to immerse itself in it by creating new meanings.
— Cristiano Raimondi
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On Saturday 8th February, Millan kicks off it's 2025 program with Calambur, a project conceived by Guga Szabzon (b.1987, São Paulo, Brazil), an artist represented by the gallery, painter Thomaz Rosa (b.1989, São Caetano do Sul, Brazil), and curator Cristiano Raimondi (b.1978, Bologna, Italy). Calumbur establishes the movements and flows that connect the production of both artists.
With works by Szabzon and Rosa, as well as pieces made by both pairs of hands, Calambur is the result of a year of dialog and collaboration between the artists. In 2024, each spent time in the other’s studio, exchanging a bank of images that had been kept as a reference, something that, coincidentally, they had already practiced beforehand. These approximations culminated in more experimental actions, with the creation of works where stages were carried out alternately between Guga and Thomaz, as well as works created together, for example, Só não sei se continuo [I Just Don’t Know if I Will Continue] (2024). In the piece, Rosa painted the projected shadows of the bodies of both artists onto a felt surface, a recurrent material in Szabzon’s production.
Cristiano Raimondi, who curated exhibitions by Szabzon at Millan in São Paulo and at Travesía Cuatro gallery in Mexico, in 2023, encouraged this approximation of the artists after noticing similarities in their artistic research. Although their works maintain significant differences, especially in terms of the processes and materials used by each artist, their compositions have in common the line, a suggestion of rapid movement, as well as an appreciation for trends in modern and late-20th-century art.
This to-and-fro between the artists is repeated in the exhibition space, through associations between the works and, above all, in one work by the duo. In Quicada [Bounce] (2024), a ping-pong table is covered in lines, shapes, paintings, and objects produced by the artists. Installed in the center of the space, the work functions as a metonymy of Calambur: the rapid movement of the ball, launched from one side to the other by the bats — or of the eyes of the person watching it — is the same as that proposed by the trio who conceived the project. Tracing the erratic and fleeting course through each artist’s universe, their studios, works, and the artists each observes, forming a trail that shuffles and reorders our gaze without static definitions —the work ORDINIEDESORDINE (2024), by Guga Szabzon, inspired by the Italian artist Alighiero Boetti, yet another shared reference, also works around this logic.
The title Calambur also deals with permutation. In its original sense, the word refers to a game where words are put together based on having a similar sound, even when they have different meanings. Finally, a zine of reference images from both artists was developed for the project in collaboration with the designer Pedro Alencar. In the form of a flipbook, the publication follows a small ball bouncing from page to page, crossing the universe of references that informs each artist’s research.
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About Guga Szabzon
Guga Szabzon explores felt as a medium for sewing, weaving images in a dialogical process between technique and gesture, where the spontaneity of the line responds to the speed of the machine. In her work, lines impetuously mark the felt, forming vibrant compositions of movement and color, or resembling landscapes, maps, and cartographic studies. The artist has had solo exhibitions at Millan and Galería Travesía Cuatro, in Guadalajara, in 2023. She was also selected for the Brasil Goes Berlin residency, funded by the German government, and participated in residencies in Portugal and Brazil.
About Thomaz Rosa
Working with a broad understanding of painting, Thomaz Rosa’s works alternate the abundance of visual information with material reticence and the retention of its content. His images vary between abstraction, geometry, and figuration. His most recent solo exhibitions were in Paris, in 2024, and São Paulo and Millan, in 2023.
About Cristiano Raimondi
An independent curator, Raimondi’s interdisciplinary vision combines contemporary art, architecture, design, history, and social sciences. He studies Brazilian artists with a special focus on geometric abstraction and “popular culture.” He is the Artistic Director of the International Prize of Contemporary Art (PIAC) of the Fondation Prince Pierre, Monaco. Raimondi organized solo exhibitions of Thomas Demand, Thomas Schütte, Ettore Spalletti, Eleonore Koch, Christine Sun Kim, Richard Artschwager, Tom Wesselmann, Rubem Valentim, Alfredo Volpi among others.


London, UK
Milan, Italy
Porto Alegre, Brazil
Porto Alegre, Brazil
Porto, Portugal
Minas Gerais, Brazil
Buenos Aires, Argentina