As children in São Paulo, twin brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo invented a universe they called Tritrez. The mystical place was home to countless yellow figures with bulbous heads and lanky bodies and promoted strange, but friendly behavior.
“Yellow has been a very spiritual color for us since we started drawing,” the couple told their gallery. Lehmann Maupin. “When we were drawing at our mother’s house, the sun would come through the windows and the studio would turn yellow. That’s why we always found it mystical, peaceful and harmonious.”
The brothers largely operate as one with shared dreams and the uncanny ability to finish each other’s thoughts OSGEMEOS (formerly), which translates to ‘the twins’ in Portuguese. Their works, rooted in graffiti and street art, will be on display at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden later this month for their largest U.S. exhibition to date.
Comprising 1,000 paintings, sculptures, photographs and archival objects, OSGEMEOS: Endless story follows the brothers’ creative evolution, recreating details from their childhood bedrooms and the infrastructure and walls they painted murals on in their youth. Rarely seen sketches and early influences such as their mother’s embroideries are on display alongside many pieces never shown outside their native Brazil.
Hip-hop and breakdance play a prominent role in the work of OSGEMEOS, including in the extensive installation ‘Untitled (92 Speakers)’. Yellow and brown faces peer out of boxy speakers and converge on a pastel pink wall. A symmetrical gramophone and boombox painted in the same way stand on the lower floor of the gallery, referencing the artists’ enduring interest in music and its influence on culture.
Other works lean further into the science fiction and supernatural realm. In the center of a gallery is a large, prismatic sculpture, depicting one of their signature figures surrounded by an alien beam protruding from a flying saucer. Similarly, the 2014 painting “Tritez” reveals the more fantastical details of the imagined realm: a blue patchwork whale cradling buildings on its back flies through the air, two siren-like characters dance in the moonlight, and a trio of figures clambers on top of it. of each other in colorful bizarre clothing.
“For us, Tritrez is our soul. It is our, shall we say, parallel world that we believe lives within us,” they say a video. “We believe that everyone has some kind of Tritrez in them. But sometimes you forget to see and sometimes you are afraid to see.”
The first monograph of OSGEMEOS’ work, written in English, accompanies the exhibition, which runs from September 29, 2024 to August 3, 2025, in Washington, DC. There is much more to see about the brothers’ works Instagramso head there to delve deeper into their whimsical world.
