“The translucent matter of the image”
The translucent matter of the image
(SKU. 14325)
-
Date
2025 -
Technique
backlight, silk satin and chiffon -
Dimensions
(H x W x D) 53 x 85 x 10 cm -
Edition
5 + 3PA -
Comes with certificate of authenticity
Couldn't load pickup availability
In Mariana Palma's work, the image vibrates between layers, transcending what is seen. Using a light box as a support, two fabrics — satin and chiffon — are juxtaposed, creating optical fusions. Transparency, already present in her pictorial and photographic research, gains three-dimensionality, establishing a sensorial game where light passes through, refracts and transforms the scene into an unstable visual organism.
The composition evokes a contemporary still life, bringing together fragments such as dried plants, shells, ice, fabrics and crustaceans. When these elements merge with the light, they create a microcosm that oscillates between the real and the ghostly. The light box acts as an altar for the image, which never completely settles, depending on the position of the observer and the lighting. In this way, Mariana Palma intensifies her investigation into the construction of the image as an optical phenomenon, where transparency and superposition trigger a dynamic and enigmatic visual space.
Biography
Mariana Palma
Mariana Palma's work is mainly represented by paintings, watercolors and photographs, in which colors and images of nature are explored in different formats and technical solutions. In her paintings, which can reach large dimensions, the entire surface of the canvas is covered with color patterns obtained through the marbling technique, which results in complex chromatic patterns. Compositions are created on these patterns with disparate elements, such as tiles, drains, plants, flowers and fabrics. Combining a precise rhythmic composition with a drama that evokes baroque painting, the images created by Palma sometimes make the creases and veins between petals and planning indistinguishable, and sometimes mix up elementary assumptions of painting, such as figure and background, distinctions between planes and the notions of landscape and portrait. Reflections on temporality and vitality also gain space in the watercolors, photographs and works on fabric, in which the artist exercises the approximation between different organic elements.
He has held several solo exhibitions, such as: "The Vanity of the Caged Bird", Vistamare, Milan, Italy (2024); "Painting as a Verb", Millan, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); "Lago Interior", Teatro Municipal Casa da Ópera, Ouro Preto, Brazil (2022); "Just like the gardens…", Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte, Brazil (2021); "Lumina", Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil (2020).
Among his participations in group exhibitions are: "Latinoamerica", La Fundación Canaria para el Desarrollo de la Pintura, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain (2023); "MON sem paredes" (2023); and "Afinidades II" (2022), Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil; "50 duetos", Espaço Cultural Unifor, Fortaleza, Brazil (2021); "Abstración", Galeria El Museo, Bogotá, Colombia (2017); "The Light that Veils the Body is the Same that Reveals the Screen", Caixa Cultural, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2017); "Piece by Piece: Building a Collection", Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas, United States (2015); "Trajectories – Brazilian Art in the Edson Queiroz Foundation Collection", Espaço Cultural Unifor, Fortaleza, Brazil (2013); and "This is Brazil! 1990-2012", Palacio de Exposiciones y Congresos, La Coruña, Spain (2012).
His work is in institutional collections such as the Rio Art Museum – MAR, Brazil; Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Brazil; Itaú Cultural Institute, Brazil; Institute of Contemporary Art, United States; Edson Queiroz Foundation, Brazil; Ribeirão Preto Art Museum, Brazil; Campinas Museum of Contemporary Art, Brazil; and Pinacoteca Municipal de Santo André, Brazil.
Representative galleries
Almeida & Dale Gallery , Sao Paulo
Destaques da carreira
-
Lumina | 2020 | Instituto Tomie Ohtake, SP | foto: Filipe Berndt
-
Soma | 2017 | Casa Triângulo, SP | foto: Filipe Berndt
-
Deságue | 2012 | Casa Triângulo, SP | foto: Edouard Fraipont
