Charles Barreto’s vision was sharpened by the friction between worlds. Born in Aracaju, it
was in the lively antique fairs of Rio de Janeiro that he first learned to see the soul of
objects. After a career in technology, he finally surrendered to his passion, trading the
logic of systems for the language of art. Today, this collector and “prospector of worlds”
creates in his studio in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro, a retreat surrounded by the
Atlantic Forest where the constant sound of a river becomes his soundtrack. It’s from this
visceral connection with his own private forest that he draws the strength to engage with
another — the vast, complex Amazon.
Against the noise of the modern world, Charles listens to what most ignore: the whisper
of forgotten things, the echo of abandoned objects, the breath of a forest still holding on.
His art doesn’t come from hurry but from patient observation, from the way time settles
into surfaces — wood, iron, leaves, memories. With each work, he invites us to rediscover
what we’ve left behind.
His creative process is visceral, almost shamanic: he combs through the world with the
eyes of a prospector and the heart of a poet. His hands collect shards, remnants,
discarded fragments — but nothing in his gestures is random. In each forgotten piece, he
recognizes a story waiting to be revealed. Then, he transforms what was once debris into
a visual relic.
His technique is assemblage — but that word explains less than it confines. Charles
stitches together time itself. In his works, past and present collide in a way that is both
beautiful and unsettling. He doesn’t frame landscapes; he reconstructs layers of
existence, translating into art what the earth, the river, and the air whisper in secret. For
him, the Amazon is not a distant theme; it is an organism, a living body in constant
dialogue with his art. His work is a silent warning: what we discard, exploit, or pretend not
to see always comes back — as art, as protest, and as beauty.
Yet his archaeology doesn’t stop at pain; it also seeks out resilience. That is why he
speaks of the sacred trinity of Amazonian elements: the root, which teaches him the
beauty of struggling to break through the soil’s resistance; the pigment, whose
painstaking extraction reminds him “how small we are” in the face of nature; and, most
importantly, the sound of water, which calms him and brings “blurred or brand-new
images that lead to the beginning of a new work.” Root, pigment, and sound: structure,
essence, and flow. The grammar of life itself.
The Forest as a Living Relic
Charles Barreto