{"id":3647,"date":"2026-10-08T12:40:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T16:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/altarpieces-and-ice-pops-rafael-silveiras-surreal-popsicledelic-trip\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T12:40:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T16:40:06","slug":"altarpieces-and-ice-pops-rafael-silveiras-surreal-popsicledelic-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/altarpieces-and-ice-pops-rafael-silveiras-surreal-popsicledelic-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"Altarpieces and Ice Pops: Rafael Silveira\u0019s Surreal \u0018Popsicledelic Trip\u0019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brazilian artist Rafael Silveira<\/strong> builds a world of playful dissonance, where a horizon can stand in for a mouth and flowers might double as eyes. He describes his long-standing interest as \u001cvisual synonymies,\u001d likened to \u001cformal correspondences between seemingly unrelated things, moments in which one image unexpectedly recognizes itself in another.\u001d<\/p>\n

Visual synonymies, from tavola centinata to the popsicle<\/h2>\n

Silveira\u0019s surreal paintings replace facial features with landforms, flora, and fauna, and at times hybridize animals, figures, and objects. The artist juxtaposes elements in unlikely situations\u0014a man with a tree for a head, or ice cream cones floating planet-like in a starry sky\u0014to probe how perception shifts when the same shape accrues wildly different associations. One historical form in particular, the tavola centinata<\/em>\u0014a canvas or relief with a squared base and rounded top, common in Gothic and early Renaissance paintings\u0014shares its silhouette with a classic popsicle.<\/p>\n

For Silveira, that overlap is more than a visual pun. \u001cThe connection is at once surprising and inevitable. One belongs to the sacred history of painting; the other to the realm of the ephemeral, the popular, the sweet, the melting. Bringing them together creates a bridge between devotional form and unstable matter, between permanence and disappearance, between the spiritual weight of the altarpiece and the fragile delight of something destined to dissolve,\u001d he says.<\/p>\n

\u0018Popsicledelic Trip\u0019 in Los Angeles<\/h2>\n

Works seen here were recently included in Silveira\u0019s solo exhibition Popsicledelic Trip<\/strong> at KP Projects Gallery<\/strong> in Los Angeles<\/strong>, presented alongside a show by Silveira\u0019s wife, the artist Fl\u0000e1via Itiber\u0000ea<\/strong>. A series of vertical pieces with ornate, hand-carved wooden frames echo the silhouette of popsicles, while figures clutch oversized frozen treats in a stylistic nod to religious art during the Renaissance<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Selected 2026 works and details:<\/p>\n