> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.catapult-platform.art/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # João Maria Gusmão Leaves the Projector in the Room - URL: https://www.catapult-platform.art/joao-maria-gusmao-zacheta-warsaw/ - Published: 2026-10-26T03:41:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-27T08:00:32.000Z - Description: Explore João Maria Gusmão's Following the White Tiger at Zachęta in Warsaw, where looping 16mm projections run beside their own projectors. - Author: Catapult Submissions Team - Tags: Material & Sculpture, Video & Moving Image, #submission, Warsaw ## Zachęta National Gallery of Art Presents Following the White Tiger in Warsaw **Zachęta National Gallery** of Art presents *Following the White Tiger,* **curated by Post Brothers**, through October 31, 2026. **Following the White Tiger** **Artist:** João Maria Gusmão **Exhibition:** Following the White Tiger **Venue:** [ Zachęta National Gallery of Art ](https://zacheta.art.pl/en?ref=catapult-platform.art) **City:** Warsaw, Poland **Dates:** August 28, 2026 – October 31, 2026 **Hours:** Tuesday to Sunday, 12 to 8 p.m. Thursday free entry **Address:** pl. Małachowskiego 3, 00-916 Warsaw **Curator:** Post Brothers **Photography:** Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive João Maria Gusmão presents Following the White Tiger at Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, on view through October 31, 2026, curated by Post Brothers. ![João Maria Gusmão, Zachęta, Warsaw: red projector stand in a tiled hall facing a lit wall projection.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-hero-1.webp) ****João Maria Gusmão,** Following the White Tiger, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-installation-01.webp) João Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger, entrance installation view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive. The show is a dozen looping 16mm film works that the artist calls film sculptures, and the projectors stay in the room, set on red, green and blue plinths beside the images they throw. The title comes from The School of the White Tiger (2024), vertical stills of a kung fu dojo in Grasse, France, where painted-over graffiti on the façade is read as abstract painting. ![João Maria Gusmão](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-detail-01.webp) João Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive. Other works include Light Cone, three superimposed projections with RGB filters, and Birds on Land, Mammals in the Sky, two masked projections that run out of sync. Below, the exhibition text opens with a greeting to monks and disciples of the imperial arts, then turns to Mao Zedong and his paper tiger. ### Exhibition Text by Zachęta National Gallery of Art Infinite Light and Blessings to our fellow masters, monks, and disciples of the imperial arts! Following the White Tiger is a showcase of cinematic materialism featuring the latest results of the Portuguese artist João Maria Gusmão’s process-based experiments with analogue means and speculative concepts. ![João Maria Gusmão, Zachęta, Warsaw: red projector stand facing a vertical blue and orange projection and a small trampoline image.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-installation-02-1.webp) João Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger; Dojo (2026), 16mm film, colour, silent, 3 min 47 sec., and Dojo d’Stilj (2026), vertical 16mm film projection, color, silent, 5 min 55 sec., installation view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive. Drawing from the seemingly mundane, the exhibition grapples with the moments when the transcendental realms of history, ideology, and aesthetics collide with their material correlates. As a counterstrike to our hypermediated present, Gusmão’s approach to film emphasizes the urgency of the indexical qualities inherent in analogue media, highlighting the dual layers of imaging: the tangible, technical construction of light-sensitive transparency, and the spectral representation of the symbolic order embedded within the imagery. ![ALT: João Maria Gusmão, Zachęta, Warsaw: dark gallery with parquet floor, red and green projector plinths and film projections on grey walls.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-installation-03.webp) João Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive. ![João Maria Gusmão, Zachęta, Warsaw: three 16mm projectors on a white plinth facing a colour-split wall projection, small bread projection at left.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-installation-04.webp) oão Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger; I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter (2026), 16mm film, colour, silent, 1 min 55sec., and Light Cone (2026), 16mm film installation, three superimposed projections, RGB filters, color, silent, 3 × 2 min 49 sec (continuous out-of-sync loop), installation view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive. ![ALT: João Maria Gusmão, Zachęta, Warsaw: wall projection of a hand and a pale swirled form in cyan and orange fringes above three film reels.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-light-cone-1.webp) João Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger; Light Cone (2026), 16mm film installation, three superimposed projections, RGB filters, color, silent, 3 × 2 min 49 sec (continuous out-of-sync loop), detail view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive. In an interview with an American journalist from August 1946, Chairman Mao Zedong remarked: “*The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't. Of course, the atom bomb is a weapon of mass slaughter, but the outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two new types of weapon. All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful.”* Like the fearsome-looking but flimsy paper creations in Chinese parades, the revolutionary leader described a split between a subject's true being and their semblance, between the imposing images one shows the other, and the reality of an underlying vulnerability. ![João Maria Gusmão, Zachęta, Warsaw: tall vertical projection of a street lamp and autumn trees at dusk beside a blue plinth with a projector.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-lamp-on-1.webp) João Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger; Lamp On (2026), vertical 16mm film anamorphic projection, graded blue filter, color, silent, 2 min 43 sec, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive. ![João Maria Gusmão, Zachęta, Warsaw: projected jockey on a horse at a racecourse beside a green plinth with a 16mm projector.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-broadcast.webp) João Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger; Broadcast (2026), 16mm film, colour, silent, 11 min, detail view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive. It is not that bombs aren’t a threat, but that imperialism has a dual nature— there are real tigers and paper tigers at the same time. Gusmão’s overall proposal embraces this double paradoxical contingency as a general ‘theory of illusion’: first, of film as an apparatus which produces the illusion of movement by describing reality as a sequence of still shots, and second, of the battle between the real vs reality as cinematic images adhere to the realm of the human, the technological, the animal, and the inhuman. Key to this disciplined modus operandi is a keen awareness of the relation between production and presentation, how the manipulation of technical conditions can re-train perception. The multichannel array of looping 16mm projected film works presented here prompts a double action — the experiencing of the illusion and simultaneously the introspection of it. ![ALT: João Maria Gusmão, Zachęta, Warsaw: projected interior of a retro electronics shop with a 16mm projector on a green base on the parquet floor.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-shorter-wave-length.webp) João Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger; Shorter Wave Length (2026), 16mm film, colour, silent, 8 min 15 sec, detail view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive. ![João Maria Gusmão, Zachęta, Warsaw: black-and-white projection of a factory hall with a blurred hand, two projectors on a white plinth.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-installation-05.webp) João Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger; Fixing Marco’s Shoes & Warsaw Industry Automatica (2026), 16mm film installation, 2 superimposed projections, b&w, silent, 7 min 17 sec & 7 min 25 sec (continuous out-of-sync loop), and Light Cone (2026), installation view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive. The title of the exhibition is drawn from Gusmão’s recent work, The School of the White Tiger (2024), a sequence of vertical still shots capturing the titular kung fu dojo, where the cover up of graffiti at its facade is imagined as a form of animal-inspired kung fu abstract expressionist painting. The exhibition proceeds as if schooled in such techniques of analogue comparisons, image-making and mimicry, deploying an ironic conceit of a particular orientalism to ponder not only post-cold war imaginations, but of Western thought against Eastern myth. The artist’s film work arrives at an apophantic materialist ‘third way’ resistant to binary thought processes that divide body and mind, the real and the imaginary, questioning our modes of existence and our self-referential representations of the world. One should note that the White Tiger is one of the ‘Four Auspicious Beasts’ in Chinese astrology guarding the West from fright, and thus the conjuration of this ferocious image serves as an analogue for the logocentric worldview of Western metaphysics. ![ALT: João Maria Gusmão, Zachęta, Warsaw: large projection of a flamingo in a circular mask, projector on a blue plinth and a green bench](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-birds-on-land-1.webp) João Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger; Birds on Land, Mammals in the Sky (2026), 16mm film installation, 2 masked superimposed projections, colour, silent, 11 min 34 sec & 15 min 29 sec (continuous out-of-sync loop), installation view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive.. ![ALT: João Maria Gusmão, Zachęta, Warsaw: projection of long-legged birds in a circular mask beside a projector with two reels on a blue plinth.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-detail-03-1.webp) João Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger; Birds on Land, Mammals in the Sky (2026), 16mm film installation, 2 masked superimposed projections, colour, silent, 11 min 34 sec & 15 min 29 sec (continuous out-of-sync loop), detail view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive. ![ALT: João Maria Gusmão, Zachęta, Warsaw: projected red sunset over a blue horizon beside a 16mm projector on a red base, green plinth at left.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/joao-maria-gusmao-following-white-tiger-zacheta-warsaw-2026-pale-horse.webp) João Maria Gusmão, Following the White Tiger; Behold, a pale horse! (where the sun sets) (2025), 16mm film, colour, silent, 11 min 06 sec, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2026\. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew / Zachęta Archive. It is a catastrophic analogy, motivated by an inquiry into the choreography of film’s illusion of movement and the limits and possibilities of its descriptive and deceptive nature. Technique, both as a routine and as a technological means of making and manipulating, is shown as a form of knowing and revealing the seen and unseen, uncovering an entanglement of the technical with the transcendental. **About the Artist** **João Maria Gusmão** Lisbon-based artist, born 1979, working across analogue film, sculpture, drawing and publishing. From 2001 to 2018 he worked as a duo with Pedro Paiva, representing Portugal at the 53rd Venice Biennale. **About the Curator** **Post Brothers** A critical enterprise that includes Matthew Post. Curator at Kunstverein München from 2016 to 2019, based in Kolonia Koplany near Białystok, Poland. **About the Location** **Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw** National gallery of art at pl. Małachowskiego 3 in Warsaw, which runs workshops and a cinema room alongside its exhibitions. 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