The Painting as a Verb

On October 6th, Mariana Palma (1979, São Paulo, Brazil) opens The Painting as a Verb [A pintura como verbo] at Millan gallery space on Rua Fradique Coutinho, n. 1.430. Curated by Ivo Mesquita, this is the first exhibition by Palma in the gallery since she joined its team earlier this year.

In The Painting as a Verb, Mariana Palma presents a set of new works created in 2023. The set shows the new direction taken in the artist's work, which is now a deep investigation of painting and image-generating processes.

These paintings create a particular world with voluptuous shapes and pulsating colors and focus on the sensuality of the gaze. For Ivo Mesquita, the exhibition's curator, Palma forms a poetic algorithm by manipulating a collection of images (of plant and animal beings), which constitute, through skillful pictorial work, theatrical and fantastic spaces, where intertwined and folded fabrics come together in curvilinear forms around a single axis.

Another development of Palma's research, in which she explores the possibilities of printing on translucent fabrics, is presented in an installation that dialogues with the architectural scale of the gallery. The installation features a series of "still lifes" from the artist's photographs, which bring together dust, dried leaves, plants, animals and fruit in different stages of decomposition. Suspended throughout the gallery, these fabrics create a scene that provokes reflection on temporality and vitality.

A series of embroideries, also suspended from the ceiling, complete the exhibition. In addition to vanitas, the works in this series have received embroidery interventions, which accumulate symbols, textures and reliefs and thus establish contrasts in the dialog with the smooth paintings.

Also on October 6th, Millan inaugurates Vanderlei Lopes' Visita Íntima, with a critical essay by Heloisa Espada, on its newly renewed space at 1.360 Rua Fradique Coutinho.