by Barranco AteliêMarch 2 - 13, 2026.
Visual Arts College.
Federal University of Goiás.
Goiânia, Brazil.
Parthenon is the first collective exhibition dedicated to the exchange between artists Valdson Ramos, Joardo Filho, and Talles Lopes in the context of Barranco Ateliê, an independent art space located in Anápolis, Goiás.
Presented at the FAV Gallery, at the School of Visual Arts of the Federal University of Goiás, the exhibition offers a snapshot of the artists' work, which is connected through issues such as authorship, architecture, and politics, while also highlighting how these fields underpin the group's recent collective experiments.
Parthenon is a project presented as part of the Claque Cultural program, organized by the Government of Goiás and SESC Goiás.
Upon entering the exhibition, on the right-hand side, visitors could see the work “Parthenon” (2019) by Joardo Filho, which reinterprets an advertisement by the construction company Provalle in VEJA magazine (1976) for the iconic parking garage of the same name built in downtown Goiânia, Goiás, in the 1970s. The installation proposes distributing the graphic piece to the public, an action combined with the playback of excerpts from the Portuguese-dubbed audio of a Discovery Channel documentary (2004) on Ancient Greece and the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens. Thus, the work re-circulates this content in a way that critically reactivates a certain monumental symbolism forged for the Brazilian Midwest.
Also at the entrance, but on the left side, artist Joardo Filho presents the video titled “Independence Day” (2026), a work that shows, in extreme slow motion, an excerpt from the film Independence Day (1996) by filmmaker Roland Emmerich. The work features scenes in which the White House and the Capitol, the seat of the presidency and the seat of the U.S. legislative branch, respectively, are blown up during an alien invasion of Earth. The extremely slow speed of the video disrupts the immediacy of the explosive scenes typical of Hollywood. At the same time, the video’s tight framing makes it difficult to easily identify the official U.S. government buildings, causing these structures to be mistaken for the countless neoclassical buildings scattered from North America to the interior of Brazil.
Also on view is a series of watercolor and ink studies from the installation “Monumental Excess” (2020), by artist Talles Lopes. The installation explores how the anonymous architecture of homes across Brazil appropriated modernist architectural elements, specifically the shape of the column from the Palácio da Alvorada (the presidential residence designed by Oscar Niemeyer in Brasília, 1958). As a result of these studies, the installation presents five of these columns on a full scale using fragile materials such as Styrofoam and mortar—elements that suggest a questioning of the material and ideological firmness of the modernist project represented by this architecture.
On the opposite side of the room, one can see a photograph on the wall and a display case containing various albums of analog photographs, dating from the 1990s and early 2000s. The images document Valdson Ramos’s work, developed over more than 30 years in parallel with his artistic practice, focusing on the artist’s craft in decorating Masonic lodges in various locations across Goiás and Tocantins. This work involves various materials and styles. Ramos designs and creates elements such as plaster domes, non-structural neoclassical columns, and panels with Egyptian motifs in relief, but primarily paints large-scale panels depicting iconic ancient architecture, such as the Parthenon.
The series of photographs is complemented by four fiberglass molds displayed on the adjacent wall. In their functional use, each of these molds is connected to the next, creating a single mold that is used to produce plaster casts of a Corinthian capital designed by Valdson Ramos. The “non-architect’s architecture” conceived by the artist is situated within a similar context: Ramos’s self-taught approach developed within the specific circumstances of Brazil’s Midwest, when the region had very few institutions for the teaching of art and/or architecture. From this perspective, his practice prompts reflection on the many groups alien to the processes of modernization—processes synthesized in the spaces planned by architects—yet who nevertheless volunteered for the task of giving form and visual identity to the built landscape in that territory.
At the center of the space stands the site-specific installation “Greco-Goiano” (2025), a replica of the column from the home of sertanejo (country) singer Gusttavo Lima, originally conceived for one of the rooms at the UFG Cultural Center, when the piece stood 6.20 meters tall, occupying the space from floor to ceiling. Now, at the FAV Gallery, “Greco-Goiano” adapts to the architectural constraints of the exhibition room. The column has been shortened and is mounted to appear as if it supports the building’s concrete beams. Cut with a handsaw, the excess parts of the column are scattered on the floor, revealing its hollow Styrofoam core and the thickness of the plaster coating.
The Greco-Goiano column functions architecturally in a manner equivalent to many of today’s neoclassical styles, often labeled as postmodern, kitsch, or historical pastiche. These architectural styles are known for their anachronistic revival of historical styles, coupled with a certain disregard for the architectural functionalism typical of modern avant-garde movements. In the exhibition, the column takes to the extreme the meaning suggested in singer Gusttavo Lima’s home: the dominance of symbolic demand over functional reason.
The spaces, laden with historical references from different periods and territories, both in Gusttavo Lima’s residence and in the spaces designed by Ramos, may here remind us of the classic book "Learning from Las Vegas" (1972), whose reflection addresses the massive consumption of signs in postmodern architecture—such as the Greco-Goiano style—as symptoms of late capitalism and mass culture. However, the book also invites reflection on how popular adherence to this architecture renders it something akin to “populist postmodernism” or “commercial vernacular”: massive, yet accessible and democratic, in contrast to the supposedly elitist judgments of taste that prevail among architects and academia.
As curator Paulo Duarte-Feitoza observes, the revival of classical architecture in the form of pastiche is “frequently touted by conservatives as a symbol of order, hierarchy, and grandeur.” In this context, the image of Gusttavo Lima’s house emerges not only “associated with the singer’s ostentation and traditionalist values,” but also criticized for issues related to his political agenda, such as the connection between sertanejo music and agribusiness with climate depletion, rural conflicts, and land concentration.
In “Parthenon,” the Greco-Goian column, the pillar of neo-conservative values, reemerges supporting the concrete roof of the FAV Gallery, a building whose design adheres to the principles of modern Brazilian architecture—the same architecture that, in the first half of the last century, epitomized the Brazilian state’s modernizing colonization regime, which, among other objectives, aimed to expand agricultural frontiers into the country’s interior. Here, if we will, “Parthenon” makes us reflect on a false dichotomy between these two temporalities and architectural languages, as well as on the different languages of a single logic conceived as a standard for the Central-West region of Brazil.
Works in the Exhibition
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