“Ground” Individual by Renata Padovan
Casa Nova is pleased to present the second individual exhibition of the artist Renata Padovan, who returns to manual work through painting, after having spent a period of time involved with sculptural, photographic, graphic, installation and sound processes that involve different techniques digital images. When the artist returns to painting it seems that her long research on frontiers and territories acquires an essential status of visual language: abstraction in pictorial composition.
His research with lines – borders between countries, borders of objects of the world, boundaries between materials, mountain silhouettes – is defined as the essence of his visual production.
In the exhibition “Lands” the intention is to show the trajectory of the artist from the 90’s until 2017 as a map composed by the constructions of fictitious and real spaces and territories, developed by the artist.
In the new series of paintings “Subtractions” Padovan reaches a maturity of his long search with the line. In this series the boundaries between painting and drawing expand by creating an abstraction proper to the pictorial language, where the lines acquire an abstract power that generates a new phase of investigation. The landscapes of mountains and terrains, which with their geological peculiarities took various sculptural forms, are here problematized on a two-dimensional surface. In her own way, the artist put aside a more literal representation and found in the painting an expanded theme with the help of pictorial abstraction.
Another highlight is the unprecedented wooden sculptures of Jequitibá, one of the oldest trees in Brazil: “A grande linha” and “A Parte Que Te Cabe”. The first is the union of the territories that demarcate the borders of Brazil with the other South American countries, which deals with the division of the South American continent since the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), an agreement between Spanish and Portuguese settlers that defines until today our geopolitical environment. The second results from the same formal procedure with the lines and exposes the problematic of the arbitrary division of territories, in this case that of Africa after its European colonization.
In both works the historical arbitrariness that defined the territorial division between colonizers and colonized is the result of the relations of supremacy and submission of the countries with greater or lesser economic and political power. With this, the exposition asks: What is the meaning of these divisions today, in times when post-colonial discourses are gaining strength and representation? Works of art that become powerful tools of knowledge and become acts of resistance.
Renata Padovan Born in São Paulo where he lives and works. Graduated in Social Communication from FAAP, she won the Virtuose scholarship in 2001 for a master’s degree at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Participated in several international programs as resident artist, among them Banff Center for the Arts, Canada; Nagasawa Art Park, Japan, Braziers international arists workshop in England and NES in Skagaströnd, Iceland. Among the individual exhibitions: Galeria Baró, Eduardo H. Fernandes Gallery, Thomas Cohn Gallery, São Paulo Cultural Center, Millan Gallery, Valu Oria Gallery, Brazilian Sculpture Museum in São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro Cultural Space of Post Office, Paço Imperial and Museu do Açude. His work has been shown in collective exhibitions and festivals, international and in Brazil.
“Ground”, solol exhibition of Renata Padovan
OPENING: November 11, 2017, Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Exhibition: November 12, 2017 to January 2018
