MARCUS VINICIUS DE PAULA

Catalog

Marcus Vinicius De Paula is a Brazilian-American sculptor based in New York.

De Paula’s practice centers on exploring his identity as a child of immigrants from Brazil, with a father who has gone from a small town in São Paulo to directing missions to Mars at NASA. His father's career has him reflect on the relative place of humanity within the history of earth and the universe. The stone and light sculptures Marcus fabricates blend ancient materials with a futuristic vision, bridging the past with the present as he imagines relics from another world.

Marcus Vinicius names his sculptures after moons of Saturn, forms at once alien, yet familiar, intimating known objects but wholly unique unto themselves; their titles approximate places of origin as much as aspirational destinations. De Paula uses this narrative to engender a discussion of humanity’s fragility and legacy. The COVID-19 pandemic is an inescapable context for the creation of some of these works - some pieces were created while the artist lived nomadically during the pandemic in remote locations across the United States.

The use of volcanic rock, granite, and alabaster, some as old as one billion years, also forces an acknowledgment of the age and longevity of these materials in perspective with humans' time on earth. The seemingly interminable length of the recent past is given context in how De Paula combines the ancient and the timeless; the technologically advanced LED lights and hand-blown neon gas tubes meld seamlessly with stone as though they were formed simultaneously and not manipulated by the artist’s hand and mind.

Within these materials, Marcus embeds lines of light throughout to cast an ethereal otherworldliness. As with the stone, he handcrafts these elements himself from neon glass and resin, which illuminate the minerality within the stones as swirls of interstellar matter. By contrasting classical stones with charged noble gasses and brutalist cyberpunk aesthetic, the monumental works begin to transcend terrestrial notions of time.

De Paula considers his works maquettes unlimited in their potential scale, informed by the soaring Brutalist and Modernist structures of his parents’ native Brazil. As a teen visiting his grandparents, Marcus would ride the bus for hours around Rio De Janeiro to absorb the city’s visual culture, supplementing his parents’ shared memories with sensory immersion. By incorporating those experiences into his practice, De Paula navigates his evolving relationship with that heritage.

Marcus Vinícius De Paula is a Brazilian-American multidisciplinary artist born in 1986 in California. He has designed with light for over 15 years across theater, film, and live performance. He has led creative direction and design for interactive installations at South by Southwest, on tour with indie-rock band Ra Ra Riot, and for multiple productions at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival. De Paula’s sculptures have been exhibited at the Salon Art & Design Fair (2024), Love House (2025), Burning Man (2022), Verso (2023), Davidson Gallery (2022).