Horror, Humor and the Absurd Darks Miranda, Flávia Metzler, Ivan Cardoso and Yuli Yamagata

Casa de Cultura do Parque presents, from March 28 to June 28, 2026, the exhibition “Horror, Humor and the Absurd” (Galeria do Parque), as part of its I Exhibition Cycle. Curated by José Augusto Ribeiro, the group show brings together works by Darks Miranda (Fortaleza, 1985), Flávia Metzler (Rio de Janeiro, 1974), Ivan Cardoso (Rio de Janeiro, 1952), and Yuli Yamagata (São Paulo, 1989) to reflect on a contemporary production marked by imaginative and ambiguous aspects.

Through films, paintings, and sculptures, the works offer visual experiences of saturation and contradiction, in which irregularity and monstrosity operate as strategies to challenge reality. “The idea is to examine how the combination of terror and comedy produces results with a force of insubordination: both in confronting the norms and developing languages that go beyond the boundaries between genres and artistic manifestations,” says the curator.

The exhibition features films by Ivan Cardoso — the master of “terrir,” a term he coined in the 1970s (a mix of terror and humor). The filmmaker brings together contrasting references in frame-by-frame collages that articulate Tropicália, German Expressionist cinema, Hélio Oiticica, Zé do Caixão, Brazilian marginal cinema, comic book narratives, sensationalist journalism, concrete poetry, among other elements, without assigning a fixed meaning to the dialogues created.

Darks Miranda incorporates the languages of cinema and collage in “A Dangerous Night on Vulcano Island” (2022), edited from excerpts of science fiction films produced between 1950 and 1980, at the height of the Cold War. The work articulates her trajectory as an editor in the construction of a “second-hand cinema.”

Flávia Metzler’s paintings construct scenes in friction with art history, using fragments of images, objects, architecture, and scientific or philosophical concepts. In assembling these images, Metzler appropriates the knowledge of framing and the organization of events in space to generate suspense.

Meanwhile, Yuli Yamagata — who has recently begun producing short videos — internalizes in her works references from horror cinema, animation, and Japanese comics, as well as the logic of ultra-processed goods. This field of interest focuses on low-cost industrial production formulas (for factories) and high risk (for consumers), based on chemical additives, thus establishing a kind of “transgenic reality.”

In addition to the group show, the cycle includes the solo exhibitions “Badauê”, by Andrea Brazil (Gabinete), and “Calendário”, by Felipe Rezende (Projeto 280X1020). According to Claudio Cretti, the institution’s artistic director, the program seeks to “push the boundaries between the conceivable and the inconceivable, highlighting the potential of fiction as a tool for critically thinking about reality.”

Finally, the Performance Program will open on March 28, 2026, at 5 pm, with performer and dancer Maria Noujaim presenting “Lago.” Through the transposition of mythology into movement, the artist explores hybridities between animal and human, taking as its starting point the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan.