03What to See & DoCULTURE
TODAY’S PICK — CCBB RIO — CENTRO
Yoshitaka Amano, Além da Fantasia — the Wednesday reopening, and the one to catch before July
If you give one afternoon to Rio culture this week, give it to the CCBB Rio, which reopens Wednesday after its Tuesday closure and runs the Yoshitaka Amano show Além da Fantasia through July 7, free every day. MAR is closed Wednesdays, which clears the calendar; the Amano show is the strongest Centro draw open today. The Japanese illustrator is best known to the international community for the Final Fantasy character designs and the visual identity of Vampire Hunter D, but the exhibition makes the case that he is a serious painter who happens to have worked in games and anime. The four decades of work are organised by the artist himself with the CCBB curatorial team. Go early; the queue builds after 15h on free days.
What to look for: the early 1970s ink and gouache work for Tatsunoko anime, where the line discipline that defines everything later is already visible; the large-scale Deva Loka canvases that anchor the main room, painted in acrylic and automotive paint on aluminium; and the fashion-house collaborations from the 2000s that surprise visitors who only know the games. The choice to hang the commercial and the fine-art work side by side does most of the argumentative work, refusing the hierarchy that would separate them. The show is interested in what illustration becomes when it stops apologising for being illustration.
