Born Fernando de Jesus Oliveira in Bahia, Brazil in 1946, the artist who goes by the simple name of Ferjo is one of the most dynamic and intriguing artists on the contemporary American scene. His surreal, even metaphysical way with a canvas has been lauded earlier, with Ferjo winning the prestigious Crescent Scholarship at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the New York Council for the Arts Award for Excellence in portraiture.

Ferjo creates a kind of magic in his paintings. In some ways, this magic is over-determined, calculated, fraught with unchecked desire. Yet through these magical compositions, one may get the sense of another world determined by the artist’s magic – a world of irrational occurrences where objects float above the floor, where walls disappear, where translucent bubbles are suspended in space, where the laws of perspective and scale are utterly defied.