São Paulo’s Art Gallery Presents an Overview of Artist Fernanda Gomes

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – White paintings on white walls. Unclear objects displayed directly on the floor or in the corners of the rooms, apparently in an improvised or diffuse way, yet outlining angles or their shapes and geometrical layout. Objects painted white or preserving their raw tone and marked by wear.

These are the features of the pieces exhibited by the Rio de Janeiro artist Fernanda Gomes, who has just staged a major exhibition at the Secession, in Vienna, Austria, and who now earns a retrospective at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo (São Paulo’s Art Gallery), in the capital. The exhibition opened yesterday, November 30th, and runs until February 24th.

“This exhibition reflects first of all on what an exhibition is”, said the artist, in an interview with Agência Brasil, while she finished setting up the venue for the opening.

Fernanda Gomes uses many everyday materials for her works – such as plaster, wood, and glass, collected in the artist’s domestic life and in her wanderings through streets, galleries and institutions. “From the most traditional to the simplest materials. There are fresh nuts, crockery, acrylic”, she cites.

These objects are tied, joined, positioned or scattered across space, producing new meanings. As a matter of fact, the works and the exhibition have no name and no date, reinforcing that their significance is built precisely by the spectator’s gaze on her work.

“I think the exhibition will produce different meanings for each person. And that’s what I hope too: that everyone feels free to think with their own head, to use their senses, to really be there without trying to understand, without trying to tie things up. Just flowing,” said the artist.

The retrospective includes 50 of her works, from the ’80s until today. The exhibition is presented in the form of a large installation composed of fragments, which unfolds through seven galleries.

Among them are some of her best-known works, such as the spheres and lines, an extension of smoked and juxtaposed cigarette wraps and the paintings made with ink and paper. There are also unpublished works conceived for the exhibition. The artist spent three weeks at the Pinacoteca for the installation.

“The idea of exhibiting Fernanda Gomes here at the Pinacoteca stemmed from the curators’ willingness to rethink her procedures. Given the nature of Fernanda’s work, this degree of experimentalism, this sense of openness and of using a great deal of expographic materials, it was all a motivation for the Pinacoteca to rethink their doings and procedures,” said curator José Augusto Ribeiro, in an interview with Agência Brasil.

According to the curator, visitors to the exhibition “will have a very unique experience with art. “They will recognize objects that are very present in practical life, in their daily lives, but reorganized in other contexts”.

As an example, one of the works may go unnoticed by a less attentive visitor: a whiteboard painted directly on the white wall, unframed and unlabelled. “Many of the artist’s works are virtually hidden in the exhibition. The exhibition invites us to take a very close look. This is one of the works, which is basically camouflaged,” said the curator.

This intensive use of white in the works is justified by the artist because the color is “more complete because at the same time it is empty and full”.

“And there’s the matter of light. White is pure light. I only use white paint,” she said.

Source: Agência Brasil