Zé Tepedino — Keep This Between Us

During Zé Tepedino’s visit to Los Angeles, we were reminded that sometimes the most meaningful gestures in art are the simplest ones. As an artist with a strong design sensibility, Zé often asks himself why before making any decision. Curiosity and intuition guide his process, and this approach gradually shaped not only the works in the exhibition, but also how we thought about the gallery itself.

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For years, the floors in our space had been a point of debate. They are covered in layers of old paint, cracks, and imperfections accumulated over time. We often asked ourselves whether we should embrace that character or replace it with something more conventional. A clean, polished concrete floor more typical of a white-wall gallery. Oftentimes fabricators and friends encouraged us to repaint the space or pour new concrete.

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When we brought this up to Zé, he paused, as he often does, before answering in his thoughtful way. After a moment, he simply said he preferred to keep the floors as they were.

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Much of Zé’s practice revolves around organization and drawing attention to elements most people overlook. In this case, he did so through a quiet gesture: placing small marbles into the cracks of the gallery floor.

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In the days leading up to the opening, Zé carefully experimented with their placement, moving them again and again until each marble found its home. What seemed like a modest intervention left a lasting impression on us.

As the opening approached, we worried people might accidentally kick the marbles or trip over them as they moved through the gallery. To our surprise, not only did the marbles remain in place throughout the night, they became one of the exhibition’s most engaging points of attention.

There were, of course, moments of fragility. A sculpture composed of two glass bottles was accidentally knocked over and broken. Rather than removing other potentially precarious elements from the installation, Zé maintained that this vulnerability was essential to the experience of the show.

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And something unexpected happened. Visitors began gently warning one another to be careful. People slowed down. They looked more closely. Gallery openings often become social gatherings where conversation and movement take precedence over quiet observation. We are all guilty of it. Yet the presence of the marbles and fragile objects subtly changed the rhythm of the room. They asked visitors to pay attention to the floor, to the space, and to the works themselves.

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In this sense, Zé’s work operates in a lineage of artists such as Robert Irwin, whose practice heightens awareness of space and perception. Rather than imposing spectacle, the work invites a heightened sensitivity to what is already present.

This exhibition also resonated deeply with the questions that led us to start the gallery in the first place. YSASI began with a simple curiosity: how might we bring a way of living with art?

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We were inspired by artists such as Isamu Noguchi and J. B. Blunk, who resisted the rigid separation between art, design, and everyday life. Their work suggested another possibility: that art could exist as part of the environments we inhabit.

When we first began this project, we had little experience in the art world or in running a gallery. What we did have were friendships with artists and a desire to create a platform that could highlight their work and bring people together around it.

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As the gallery developed alongside our studio, we often questioned the boundaries that traditionally separate disciplines. Could one work between art and design? Could a space function simultaneously as studio, gallery, and meeting place? Or did we need to follow the established rules of each field in order to be taken seriously?

Along the way, we have been fortunate to encounter people who encouraged us to continue trusting the path we were exploring. The first day that Zè arrived to Los Angeles, we spoke about alternative models of art and commerce from artist communities in Brazil to artists who blur the boundaries between high and popular culture, like Barry McGee. Later that same week, we were invited to the opening of Zé’s exhibition at 99 Store, a space where we had organized a group show only months earlier. These coincidences and many others felt like reminders of the exhibition’s title: Keep This Between Us.

Over the course of two weeks, countless conversations unfolded among friends we began calling la banda. We spoke about carnival traditions, about music, and about collective forms of celebration. Zé often referenced mentors who view the way they live as inseparable from their artistic practice. He describes these approaches as “poetic systems,” ways of organizing the world through gestures and shared experiences.

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In many ways, art can be understood as a way of creating meaning within the disorder of everyday life, revealing unexpected beauty in the ordinary. Our time with Zé reminded us why we started this project in the first place. It also encouraged us to imagine new possibilities for what the gallery might become in the future. While these ideas will continue to take shape in the coming years, one thing became clear through this collaboration: we want YSASI to remain a space for experimentation, conversation, and collaboration. Keep This Between Us marked the beginning of a new direction for the gallery, one that will evolve into a residency-based program where artists are invited to spend time in Los Angeles, working with us to transform the space into an extension of their studio. For now, we simply remain grateful for the two weeks we spent with Zé—building, questioning, and celebrating. And, as the exhibition title gently suggests, we’ll keep some of those moments between us.