Walmor Corrêa, a Brazilian artist and naturalist, meticulously analyzes natural species and popular legend within the folds of art and science. His paintings, drawings and dioramas record, reveal and project the creative possibilities of exploring the inner biology of hidden, unknown and mythic animals.

In his Unheimlich (that which is not domestic, unfamiliar, not simple) series for this exhibition he takes on: the Onça-boi a highly feared mythical inhabitant of the Amazon with a body of a Jaguar and paws of an ox; the Caperobo (part man, part ant eater); and the Ipupiara a marine animal Portuguese colonials described as having a large head, a mustache, long arms, pointed teeth and fins instead of feet. A rich source for some of these creatures are medieval bestiaries and travel diaries of Europeans who visited Brazil such as the German merchant João Nieuhoff’s Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense Zee en Lant Reize (1682). Instead of imagining these hybrid animals through sensational renditions Corrêa constructs them from the inside out with exquisite original scientific interpretations based on known facts of their potential biological condition.