Day for Night / Clownwork and a Pale Horse

João Maria Gusmão

Info: In the wake of 2026, Sies + Höke is pleased to present a two-fold exhibition by João Maria Gusmão, divided between the gallery’s third floor and its apartment showroom. Distilled from the alchemical and conceptual compost of the artist’s cultivated idiocy, here lies a double conundrum about the end of the world. On the third floor of the gallery, Gusmão unveils Day for Night, a suite of ultra large-format darkroom polaroids (20 × 24 in. RA4 reversal prints) that engage with the cinematic device once used by classical filmmakers to depict nighttime in broad daylight. This technique consisted of a simulated colour and density rendering produced through a combination of underexposure and colour filters in camera—a photochemical workaround enabling directors to include in their movies night scenes otherwise impossible to shoot. (…) Following Day for Night comes Clownwork and a Pale Horse, a 16 mm film program featuring two new films by the artist alongside a selection of recent work. The mood changes as the medium turns animated. True to its formula—no formula—each film summons its own distinct cinematic experiment. Together, they compose a broad overview of the artist’s experimental thought, practice, and aesthetic: analogue means sublimated by analogue concepts; sympathetic magic verges on oracular materialism; augury; spell and counter-spell; metonymies to ponder the disquiet of our time and the thereafter. (…)