Mauro Antonio Barreto: Endless Bummer 
Curatedby Carl Gunhouse
September 29th — October 29th,2023
Opening September 29th 6 to 9PM
The Java Project, Brooklyn, NY

Mauro Antonio Barreto’s photographs wind through a figurative long afternoon, roving from backyards to front stoops, chancing on close friends and lovers. The encounters depicted in the five large scale portraits are romantic and even melodramatic, but their specific circumstances remain allusive, be they a breakup, a mending of a relationship, or a negotiation of unrequited love.  

Dressed in vintage clothing, posed in nondescript settings, the individuals are difficult to place in a particular era: the present imitating the 90s or the 90s looking back at an earlier time. From vignette to vignette, as the light wanes and flowers become brittle, the figures seem to be longing for their own youth while they themselves are still young.

Barreto sees mourning youth’s passing and the practice of photography itself as twinned phenomena. Photographs stir emotions in us because they depict the loss of the present to the past. Similarly, youth is perceived most consciously, most achingly once it has already begun to fade. 

Coinciding with this exhibition, Neue Welt will publish a 12-page zine, Endless Bummer, in an edition of 50.

Mauro Antonio Barreto has presented his work in solo exhibitions at Random Sample(Nashville, TN), the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Spellerberg Projects (Lockhart, TX), Central Texas College, and the San Angelo Museum ofFine Art. He earned a BA in art from Yale University and an MFA in photography from the University of Hartford. Barreto lives and works in Nashville, TN.