Marina Rheingantz “Suor”

Marina Rheingantz “Suor”

Bortolami

This event has ended.

Bortolami Gallery presents Suor, our second solo exhibition with the São Paolo-based artist Marina Rheingantz. Rheingantz paints in a liminal space between abstraction and representation, each canvas a distillation of specific landscapes and memories from travels within her native Brazil and abroad.

Large canvases such as Suor, or “sweat”, the namesake painting of this exhibition, are awash with ethereal color which evoke both the enormity and tactility of the natural world. Opaque and tertiary hues are thinned just enough to reveal the strata of intensely saturated pigments below, a layering as sculptural as it is painterly. These earthy yet effervescent color fields are punctuated with clusters of rich impasto and an array of short brushstrokes redolent of windswept leaves.

Smaller, more intimate works are sewn as embroideries on canvas, each stitch a textural analog to Rheingantz’s staccato-like brushstrokes. Paintings such as Sei Arrivata and Teatro de Sombra are made with canvas jute which has been primed with a clear gesso. The thick beige fabric serves as a textural counterpoint to the artist’s soft, tinted color fields. Pigment is dragged across and rubbed into the thickly woven substrate, imparting a coarse texture akin to pastel or charcoal.

This vacillation between extremely thick and thin paint functions as if one were to tighten the lens focus of a camera ­– an adjustment from the infinite to the infinitesimal. These contrasts offer not only an alluring depth of field but a crystallization of experience, as if the artist has translated the most vivid moments from a memory into concrete, tangible form. It is in this emotional space which Rheingantz thrives, placing the viewer within an utterly unique sensorial environment which emphasizes touch and feeling above observation alone.

Media

• Painting

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