São Paulo-based artist Marina Perez Simão’s first solo exhibition is being debuted in Pace Gallery in New York City. Influenced by painters such as Tarsila do Amaral, Agnes Pelton, and Luchita Hurtado, Simão’s work is situated within a larger constellation of artists who have similarly used the landscape to explore the metaphysical elements of nature.
With the artist’s new series of paintings, she presents a symbol of hope—a beacon for a future not yet mapped out but filled with infinite possibilities. Referencing a phrase by Brazilian novelist João Guimarães Rosa, the exhibition title, Tudo é e não é, translates to Everything is and is not, encompassing the ambiguity of life and abstraction as a whole.
Simão’s new body of work reflects the evolution of her artistic practice while quarantining in Brazil this past year. Unlike her previous work, these new paintings see Simão honing her study of light. Simão uses a variety of techniques, such as collage, drawing, and oil painting, as starting points in order to marry interior and exterior landscapes. She composes visual journeys that sometimes traverse the unknown, the abstract and the nebulous, but also include visions and memories.
Simão’s work is held in several public collections worldwide, including the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne in France, The Ekard Collection in the Netherlands, and the Samdani Art Foundation in Bangladesh, as well as the Speed Art Museum in Kentucky and the University of Chicago in the United States.