“King of Klowns,” Nástio Mosquito’s first main overview exhibition at M HKA takes us on a journey of invention, wherein we’re confronted by personalities demanding that we study to navigate a fancy world.

Nástio Mosquito is a artistic protagonist who trespasses into many alternative fields, together with that of up to date artwork. His paintings, which is primarily in video and efficiency, encompasses the invention of a number of personas. Taking inspiration from varied worlds—from tradition, to politics and mass media—and utilising an unbridled creativeness, every paintings varieties a portrait of an entire new persona and worldview. Mosquito performs with charisma and with otherness, with being humorous and being scary, and with being entertaining and being awkward. Ideas on battle, intercourse, stereotypes, wealth and faith are amongst the various topics which might be interrogated by these egos that we meet. The questions are easy but radical: what do you genuinely care about? What are you prepared to die for?

Characterised by its non-conformity, Mosquito’s artworks typically toy with “appropriate” modes of cultural illustration, conventions of language, and rhetoric of the media. With the artist himself embodying every new character, we’re continually perplexed by who’s the true Nástio Mosquito—at anyone second, he’s the preacher, the politician or the joker, or any mixture thereof. In an period the place the inventive sphere habitually defines artists by their identities, Mosquito’s proposition can because of this be thought-about one thing altogether completely different. Unrestrained in his portrayal and invention, his artwork cuts via right now’s state of affairs of accelerating cultural restraint, and factors in direction of the readability of a liberated view upon artwork, expression and society.

“King of Klowns” is Mosquito’s first main museum overview exhibition, and can contemplate the evolution of his apply, in addition to his transgressions into, and out of, artwork. It would current key artworks from the formative interval of his apply within the early 2000s via to right now, together with his excursions into efficiency, literature and music, in addition to his collaborative endeavours. Taking us alongside a specifically conceived journey, the exhibition may even embody new reflections by the artist on his profession via substantial new productions. “King of Klowns” will immerse guests in Mosquito’s realm of complicated characters, in flip demanding of us that we study to navigate a fancy world.

at M HKA, Antwerp
till January 26, 2025