Artnet News ·October 2025 ·7 min read
Marco Ferreira’s Sculptural Interventions Challenge Urban Space
An in-depth look at the Brazilian sculptor's practice and his representation by ARTIS, on the eve of a new public installation in São Paulo.
Marco Ferreira’s work rarely sits quietly. A welded-steel piece of his, installed in a plaza in São Paulo last year, was initially the subject of municipal complaints; by the end of the season the same plaza had become a gathering point. The sculpture had not changed. The city had changed around it.
From São Paulo to Barcelona
Ferreira’s signing with ARTIS earlier this year marked the Brazilian artist’s first formal gallery representation in Europe. It is a significant move, both for the artist and for the gallery, whose programming now gains access to Ferreira’s large-scale public works and deep institutional relationships across Latin America.
Public sculpture should not decorate a city. It should ask a question of it.
Upcoming installation
A new intervention — Ferreira’s largest to date — will be unveiled in São Paulo next spring, in collaboration with ARTIS and a municipal cultural partner. The work consists of three vertical steel elements arranged so that, at a specific time of year, they cast a single continuous shadow across the plaza.
It is, in Ferreira’s words, «a piece that only exists fully once a year, for ninety seconds.»