São Paulo-based artist Andre Komatsu’s sculptures and installations employ architectural and design forms to critique prevalent social orders. In Conquista Conquistado (2011), for example, a wall of concrete blocks emerges from the center of a draughtsman’s table, upsetting the object’s functionality. A recurrent motif in his oeuvre, the concrete wall symbolizes the stagnant bureaucracy and roadblocks that create social imbalance, while his appropriation of modernist forms highlights the failures of idealism promulgated by past art-historical movements. Komatsu was selected for inclusion in the 2015 Venice Biennale.