RODRIGO SILVEIRA: TYPOLOGY OF A SECOND LIFE

Rodrigo Silveira is a designer who has been working with wood since 2005. With a focus as much on the process as the end result, from the 2^nd of October he will be presenting the exhibition “Typology of a second life”, exhibiting 12 pieces which weave a narrative that starts with the felling of the tree and ends with the finished article, a piece of furniture on which to sit. “I see the work as beginning not in the workshop but in the forest, in the transformation of a powerful entity into a subservient piece”, he explained. The exhibition invites the observer to reflect on the natural environment and today´s extractivism practices.

A defender of community sustainable forestry management, where natural resources are used in a rational and planned manner conducive to environmental protection, renewal of the forest, and for the benefit of local communities, Rodrigo tells his story through the works he crafts. Accompanying the process of extractivism, the works convey the sensation of suffering of the tree in its journey to becoming an item of furniture. “Any type of extraction carries a price, often hardly palpable, and it is this scenario I seek to portray in the show. I start literally with a piece of the forest on the floor, a plank of wood, which then “rises up” in the subsequent work and so forth, until becoming the end product of a seat”.

According to the curator Waldick Jatoba, “the show explores the manual process and concept underpinning all of Rodrigo Silveira´s work. Beyond crafting the object, his focus centers on the process itself.”

In 2015, the designer entered a chair with a 3-meter-tall back to the Milan Design Week at the Litta Palace with the aim of portraying the true size of the tree to the viewer. “From Tree to Chair” was part of an ongoing project of conceptual experimentation based on the premise that “furniture is made from trees”. With a deliberately limited commercial output of 5 to 10 pieces a month, Rodrigo consolidates the path he chose to pursue of handcrafting pieces with a constant eye to the durability of his creations, in terms of both the quality of workmanship and timeless nature of their designs. “People forget the tree behind the object in their room, for instance. I believe that through a more literal approach, as embraced in this exhibition, I can educate those present in some way.”

The exhibition marks the reopening of the Casa de Vidro (Glass House) as an exhibition venue for temporary shows, having closed its doors since March 2020 due to the pandemic, and is part of the São Paulo Design Week program which runs from the 3^rd to the 10^th of October.  Rodrigo Silveira´s furniture is held in a number of important private art and design collections and, since 2017, also features in the permanent collection of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP).