Nara Roesler Rio de Janeiro is proud to announce the opening of Sérgio Sister: Linked Paintings, a solo exhibition of the São Paulo-based artist, who has established himself as one of the most prominent names in contemporary Brazilian painting. The show, which opens on November 3 and will be on view until December 23, 2021, is a unique opportunity to discover Sister's recent production. With an oeuvre spanning over five decades, the artist has become one of the most important figures of monochromatic painting in Brazil, having participated in two editions of the São Paulo Biennial (1967 and 2002) and with works included in major institutional collections, such as the Center Georges Pompidou, in Paris, the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, in São Paulo, and the Pinault Collection, in Venice.
The exhibition showcases a selection of new works produced during the pandemic, furthering the artist's investigation into the possibilities of chromatic behaviors and materiality of the surface. The prolific effect of Sérgio Sister's painting emerges from his engagement with light as a means of activating color which, in turn, allows for viewers to perceive chromatic variations emphasized by irregular brushstrokes that reveal the rich material intricacy of the colored surfaces. The renovating power of his practice in the visual field seeks to integrate the fundamental elements of painting—color, light, and gesture—, creating chromatic compositions with unique and subtle effects based on color juxtaposition.
These characteristics define Sister's works as "dense painting, rich in textures and surface variations, fundamentally monochromatic," in the words of the curator and art historian Luis Pérez-Oramas. The monochrome, then, is the contemporary genre to which the artist has been dedicated since the 1980s, becoming "one of the most subtle and complex representatives of monochrome painting in America."
The show also includes a series of objects situated between painting and sculpture, which place colors in relation to each other within three-dimensional structures. Sister's objects, such as Batten, Boxes, and Linked Paintings series, which the artist has been producing since the turn of the century, invite the audience to reflect upon the potential effects and reverberations of color and material combinations.
In Linked Paintings, the audience will have the chance to take a close look atthe recent production of a master of contemporary Brazilian art, delving into the latest developments in his investigation into the materiality of painting through subtle compositions, where the wealth of the process instills the surface with a depth and dimensionality of the material itself and its interaction with light.
