Marina Rheingantz’s latest exhibition at Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel | Galpão, Todo mar tem um rio [Every sea holds a river], is comprised of four large-format paintings presenting the artist’s work in a monumental scale. Each canvas is 10 feet tall, and widths range from 10 to 18 feet. Together they form an almost continuous segment that fills the space at Barra Funda, São Paulo.

From the beginning of her career in 2008, Rheingantz chose the landscape as an ongoing theme in her paintings. She builds on scenes from her travels or childhood memories – specially the vast fields of Araraquara, the countryside town in the state of São Paulo where she was born – to assemble remote landscapes that verge on abstraction. Exuding an atmosphere as diffuse as memory itself, her sceneries go from quiet to dystopian. Human presence is never overt, but instead appears only through vestiges.

In her recent works, cliffs, mountains, branches, waves and swamps blend with Moroccan tapestry inspired patterns. While bringing tapestry and topography to the same level, the artist seems to rescue what they both have in common: them being transient areas, which invite the viewer to step forward and follow paths. In Fuleragem (2018), the artist transits between various dimensions through thick brushstrokes and short gestures. The sense of perspective dissolves on the canvas, blurring the lines between earth and sky, as countless dots are scattered like embroidery. In a similar way, a mesh is weft in Todo mar tem um rio (2018) – the work which lends its title to the show – as reflections rhythmically dance on the water surface.

Within the arid landscape of Kalimba (2018) an opaque layer covers the flora like a mantle. The ochre hues that drench the canvas are interrupted by electric strokes of pink, orange and blue, revealing a peculiar aspect of the artist’s process, which often uses the surface of the canvas as a pallet to mix the colors. It’s also evidence of the almost sculptural treatment Marina imparts to the thick layers of paint, like colored clay to be molded. In Rabetão de ouro (2019), the liquefied matter of the mud (and in a wider sense of her own painting) becomes the very theme of the piece. An energetic gesture shapes what the artist describes as “mud spurt”, which violently spreads around a set on the verge of collapsing.

Marina Rheingantz (Araraquara, 1983) lives and works in São Paulo. The show Rebote [Rebound], which presents a dialogue between her paintings and Mauro Restiffe’s photographs, is on view until June 15^th at Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro. Recent solo shows include: Várzea, Bortolami Gallery (New York, 2018); Galope, Zeno X Gallery (Antwerp, 2017); Terra Líquida, Galeria Fortes Vilaça (São Paulo, 2016); and Dot Line Line Dot, Nichido Contemporary Art (Tokyo, 2016). Notable group shows include: On Landscapes – Biennial of Painting, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Deurle, Belgium, 2018); Mínimo, múltiplo, comum, Estação Pinacoteca (São Paulo, 2018); Projeto Piauí, Pivô (São Paulo, 2016); Soft Power, Kunsthal KAdE (Amersfoort, Netherlands, 2016); Prêmio PIPA, MAM Rio (Rio de Janeiro, 2015). Her work is present in the following collections: Museu Serralves (Porto), Taguchi Art Collection (Tokyo), Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, MAM Rio (Rio de Janeiro), Itaú Cultural (São Paulo), among others.