Nara Roesler Rio de Janeiro is pleased to present A River in Me, a solo exhibition by the artist Manoela Medeiros, featuring new works developed especially for the show. In her practice, the artist articulates an approach to painting that goes beyond the specificity of its own medium, incorporating elements of sculpture, performance, and installation. From this hybrid perspective of the pictorial, Medeiros interrogates artistic media beyond their conventional formats, where paintings and in situ installations serve to explore the relationships between space, time, and the corporeality of both the artwork and the viewer. Often intervening directly in exhibition spaces, Medeiros conceives her works based on the site’s details, whether material aspects, structural elements, or even its relationship with natural and artificial light. Her practice introduces an organic quality into the space by exposing its entrails, or structures, turning architecture not merely into a framework, but into a specific body in itself within the experience of art.
For the artist, both the walls and her paintings function as a “repository of architectural sediments.” Part of her gesture consists of subtracting overlapping layers, creating compositions “through the removal of material that once covered the surface of the work.” “Archaeology is not seen as a theme, but as a working method,” she explains. Medeiros excavates the surfaces of her paintings, and often also the walls of the exhibition space, “revealing layers of color and materials that had been used, covered over, and thus forgotten over time.” In this way, she operates in a “liminal space between construction and destruction, with a gesture that borders on that of a painter–bricklayer–archaeologist.”
Manoela Medeiros notes that the exhibition at Nara Roesler Rio de Janeiro “was the first time the creative process unfolded in a very organic and free way.” “This time, it was the studio process that more strongly shaped the works in the exhibition. I worked freely, mainly on excavated paintings, and from them I built a body of work and its internal dialogue.”