Rafael Plaisant | Repositórios

High Noon is pleased to present Rafael Plaisant’s second exhibition with the gallery, Repositórios. The new body of work continues Plaisant’s interest in organizing visual language, emphasizing memory’s subjective and abstract dimensions. Drawing inspiration from cabinets of curiosity— a historical art reference to Renaissance collections of rare, exotic, and enigmatic objects— the series delves into the act of collecting as a form of self-organization; a way to structure thoughts, emotions, and creative processes.

 

Repositórios intertwines personal mythologies, where each collected object or image becomes a fragment of a larger, intimate narrative. Some works take a more literal autobiographical position, incorporating parts of Plaisant’s own body as compositional elements, highlighting that these repositories are not merely physical spaces but also mental and emotional landscapes, where the boundaries between the external and internal blur. The objects act as relics of a personal archive, imbued with symbolic meaning and layered with individual and collective memory.

 

The concept of horror vacui— the fear of empty space— manifests in the meticulous arrangement of these collections, where every inch is filled with meaning, texture, and detail. This dense visual field reflects a desire to confront emptiness, to fill voids with fragments of existence, and to create order from chaos.

 

Simultaneously, the series engages with the tradition of vanitas, a genre that meditates on the transience of life and the inevitability of decay. The objects within the repositories, though carefully curated and preserved, carry an undercurrent of impermanence. The vignettes of landscapes, imaginary creatures, geological fragments, and art historical references serve as reminders of the fleeting nature of materiality and the passage of time. Within this context, the Repositórios act as fortifications, akin to De Chirico’s sentinels and structures, protecting metaphysical objects and associations from the encroaching outside world, much like the recurring egg symbol throughout the series; it is both permeable and protective.

 

This personal archive is filled with Plaisant’s influences and the conflicts of contemporary society. In Repositório XXX (The Temptation of St. Anthony), three artists respond to social unrest with references to Goya, Picasso, and Guston. This unrest also manifests as an autobiographical index wherein he expresses, “The mythical creatures of art history torment my brain.” Repositório XXXV (The Serpent’s Egg), draws upon the allegory of the serpent’s egg from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” suggesting the potential for a minor, seemingly insignificant threat to escalate into a catastrophe.

 

Other alcoves display more playful pairings. In Repositório XXVIII, Ed Ruscha’s OOF (1962) shares space with a vast, Dali-inspired landscape of Rio and moonlit Rousseau water. Repositório XXV includes a master copy of Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox (1655) transformed from a grim reminder of mortality into an exalted, beatified figure, alongside geodes and jewels.

 

Repositórios reflects on the human condition and humanity’s natural desire to organize as a means of connection and comprehension while confronting the ephemeral and the unknown. It examines the intersection of personal and collective histories, emphasizing how individuals derive meaning from fragments of their experiences.

 

Rafael Plaisant earned his BFA in Architectural Design at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Since 2003, his commercial work as a tattoo artist has taken him around the globe until early 2020, with the onset of the pandemic, Plaisant dedicated his focus to painting full time. His work has been exhibited in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Vienna, Porto, São Paulo, and Rio De Janeiro and has been written about in The Wall Street Journal, The Art Newspaper, and FAD Magazine. He completed a 2024 residency at Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY) and has been invited to a 2025 residency at the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT). Plaisant lives and works in Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro.