15/09/2026
Now on view ALVA a solo exhibition by BERNARDO LIU
10 SEPTEMBER - 17 OCTOBER 2026 in Berlin Tea plantations were among the reasons Chinese migrants came to Brazil, a history Bernardo Liu shares through his maternal grandfather. The plantations failed and the forest grew over them, and Liu paints the vanished tea plants back in from cultural memory as the ground of his canvases. Onto these imagined landscapes he sets real porcelain objects, from his own collection or found in antique shops, painted from life. „A plant is not necessarily more alive than a porcelain object,“ writes Pedro Scudeller. The jungle here is Brazil itself, taking things in and hybridizing them.
The palette does the same. East meets South in cool, refined, intimate tones, with none of the heat one expects from Brazilian painting. Chinese flower cakes appear in one work, a long-tailed rooster in the central painting. Titles like Bom dia (Good morning), Tarde de sol (Sunny afternoon) and Pão de açúcar (Sugarloaf) read as notes on a single day in Rio. Alva is Portuguese for daybreak, the pale light before sunrise.
With critical text by Pedro Scudeller Pedro Scudeller
Hua International, Potsdamer Strasse 81B, Berlin
