Çonoplaztía presents a new group of works by Fabio Morais that has originating from a variety of publications. Works are formed by sets of laser cut acrylic letters and numbers mounted on the wall. The combination of letters and numbers only make sense when read out loud. Thus, the reading is not based on the image of the word - which the eye recognizes as a total image, without having to spell it - but on the sound generated by the act of reading letter by letter, syllable by syllable, orally or mentally.

This detachment between the reading and the image of the word requires engagement from the spectator. If the observer decides to decipher the proposed language, Morais imposes an elongated time to decode his writing.

Çonoplaztía, the work that gives its title to the exhibition, is also the first work visible when entering the show. Perhaps that is why its layout is the most traditional of all, maintaining the most common western reading, from left to right, and the formal aspects of the conventional word. The variant of the word "sonoplasty” [sound design] does not come to be a phonetic transcription typical of dictionaries considering it does not use the codes of the phonetic alphabet, but uses the sound of the speech to substitute letters by other letters within the Latin alphabet itself.

çonoplaztía functions as an introduction for the exhibit where sentences are dissembled horizontally, and phrases are replaced by letters and numbers whose sizes and positions dictate the rhythm in which they are to be read. The very meaning of the term sound design, which refers to the set of sound effects used in films, plays or radio, indicates that the greater importance will be in the sound offered by each character, and not by its image.

Erre (2018) completes the exhibition. Although, at first glance, the work seems to disassociate itself from the other works in the exhibition, erre also works with the detachment of signifier from meaning that guides the works of çonoplztía. In this work, a set of errors is proposed in a two-line text, in which the error is the pointing out of an error that never occurred.

The book “Retícula, trabalhos de 2003 a 2018”, a monograph on Morais’ work, is published by Automatica with editing and text by curator Jacopo Crivelli Visconti. The book is sponsored by the collectors Luciana and Antonio Wever and by the Moraes-Barbosa Collection. It is produced by Vermelho through a grant by Ministério da Cultura [Ministry of Culture].

Fabio Morais participated in several institutional exhibitions in 2018, including Water in The World – Flowing Deep Inside, at HilbertRaum, Berlim, Germany; this show is currently itinerating at Adelina Instituto Cultural, São Paulo, through February 2019. Morais also participated in IN LOCUS - Mostra de Performance, at Sesc Santo Amaro, and also in group shows at Museu Victor Meirelles and Museu de Arte de Santa Catarina.

Fabio Morais has had his work shown in exhibitions including Bienal Sur (2017), Bienal de Fotografia de Lima (2014), 8ª Bienal do Mercosul (2011) e 29ª Bienal de São Paulo (2010).