Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel is pleased to present Persona, Gokula Stoffel’s first solo exhibition since joining the gallery roster. The show brings together 18 pieces that reveal restlessness and subjectivity. Working between small-scale works that fit the hand to large formats, the artist explores everything from the classic genre of oil painting on linen to sculptures in resin and biscuit, including weaving and the assemblage of fabrics.

In a modus operandi radically opposed to linearity, Gokula overlaps thoughts and moods as she combines materials of different origins. In Meditation (2021), for example, a biscuit hand is inserted into a rope weaving, which in turn acquires planes of color through the use of wool that is organically woven into a sisal weave. After days of observation, the group acquires wire legs, clothes and a suggestive oil-painted profile; a body that takes shape while reinforcing a confusion between landscape and figuration.

The exhibition results from this empirical process dear to the artist, who develops much intimacy with the materials and their possibilities in the daily studio practice. In the small painting Suspense (2020), rarefied brushstrokes suggest the image of a face that is between tension, melancholy and expectation. Concha e falo (2021), on the other hand, is a wall sculpture that brings manual labor as its central element, forming creases in which you can see protuberances and depths imprinted with the artist’s fingers.

The show is accompanied by a critical text by curator Ricardo Sardenberg.

Gokula Stoffel (Porto Alegre, 1988) lives and works in São Paulo. Her main solo exhibitions include: Para-Sol, Pivô (São Paulo, 2018); Alvorada de Vênus, Auroras (São Paulo, 2018); and Madona Ansiosa, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel (São Paulo, 2017). The artist has participated in several group shows, such as Nightfall, curated by Fernanda Brenner, Milovan Farronato and Erika Verzutti, at Mendes Wood DM (Brussels, Belgium, 2018); and Abre Alas #12, curated by Adriana Varejão, Paula Borghi and André Sheik, in A Gentil Carioca (Rio de Janeiro, 2016).