ENTRE A TERRA E O MAR / BETWEEN THE LAND AND THE SEA

With Ana Takenaka and Yasmin Guimarães

On view at Quadra Gallery, 175 rua Dias Ferreira, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from October 19th until December 10th 2019

In Between the Land and the Sea, the artworks of São Paulo artists Ana Takenaka and Yasmin Guimarães dialogue in a free and airy manner, like the wind that blows the sailing boats roaming the ocean and that gusts the hills neighboring the exhibition space.

Freedom and intuition indeed permeate the artists’ production, guiding their gestures to create and organize formal elements in an experiment beyond painting, drawing and engraving in which the artwork is constructed outside established rules, suggesting an intuitive image of the world.

In Yasmin Guimaraes’ paintings, motion and matter lead the composition. Dots, brush strokes and diffuse colors spreads looking like clouds seem to capture the evanescent poetic of abstract landscapes, reminding the artist’s initial works as conceptual photographer. Suppressing the notion of perspective, the delicate colors of the paintings are floating on the canvas, coexisting sometimes with empty spaces of linen or transparent veil. Generally constructed in centrifugal motion, Yasmin Guimarães’ artworks translate the energy of personal experiences, the light’s variations of different places or the vibrations of emotional states, turning the invisible visible, like a musical arrangement.

Conversing with the reflection about the creative process and the reception of art and life of Yasmin Guimarães, Ana Takenaka’s engravings and drawings express the joy of encounters and life’s daydreams, echoing with the affirmation of German artist Max Liebermann “drawing is the art of letting go”.

In the artist’s artworks, lines carry impulsions or bring breathings meanwhile words, symbols and forms float in the void. Elaborating her engravings like rituals, Ana Takenaka brings into the paper her Japanese ancestral origins, viewing formal elements as independent visual components, either converging points, either counterpoints.

The experiment present in Ana Takenaka’s production also reveals her desire to question and overcome the classical immutability of the matrix trough processes of inking and cleaning, using stripes and colored forms of crepe tape or chine collé, playing with graphic elements and the paper’s materiality.

Ana Takenaka and Yasmin Guimarães act as vectors, collecting life’s and nature’s impressions to provide visions of other possible worlds. Exploring the visual realm’s autonomy, its lines, dots, spreads and voids, the artists propose, in Between the Land and the Sea, a playful reading of potential narratives in which freedom and the present are the guides, creating a shift of perspective. This operation refers to movement, in particular eye movement, since to focus on each detail of an artwork, it is needed to abandon the previous, therefore opening the gaze to the magic of the instant. In the transitory world created by Ana Takenaka and Yasmin Guimarães, the flux, the vibration, the becoming of things create a space where colors, light and lines can flow as the notes of a musical arrangement, like the wind that connects the land to the sea.

Ana Takenaka

São Bernardo do Campo - SP, 1987, lives and works in São Paulo.

Graduated in Visual Arts at Centro Universitário Belas Artes of São Paulo (2013), among her recent shows one can highlight“O Alumínio e a Gravura em Metal”, Centro Cultural do Aluminio, São Paulo (2019), “Annual International Competition”, The Print Center, Philadelphia, USA (2018), “Opções de Fim de Mundo”, Arte Londrina 6, Casa de Cultura UEL, Londrina (2018), “Compartiarte”, Centro Brasileiro Britânico (CBB), São Paulo (2017), “11e Biennale de Gravure”, Musée de la Boverie, Liège, Belgium (2017). She was granted with the Acquisition Prize from the 44th Salão de Arte Contemporânea Luiz Sacilotto and of the 22nd Salão de Artes Plásticas de Mococa.

Takenaka is inspired by drawings, etchings, paper making, japanese calligraphy ando oriental philosophy. She searches in her drawings, the representation of sensations and thoughts through the line and the gesture, exploring the possibilities of abstraction and representation. This graphic research is expanded in her etchings, in which, despite the differences between the languages she uses (one of emergency and the other of process), she tries to explore the steps of the construction of the image to implement choices and manoeuvers that define it monotipically. She currently studies the paper manufacture process, integrating it to her drawings and etchings.

Yasmin Guimarães

Ribeirão Preto – SP, 1991, lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.

Guimarães has exhibited in the solo shows “Eyes e yes”, Galeria Superfície, São Paulo (2018);  “Guimarães – reticências”, Galeria Superfície, São Paulo (2016) and among other group shows in “Abraço Coletivo”, Ateliê397, São Paulo (2019), ”Habita-me”, Palacete 1922, Ribeirão Preto (2018), “Scapeland - Território de Trânsito Livre”, Memorial da América Latina, São Paulo (2018), “Almas não tem idade”, Sítio Prisma d'Água, Alto Paraíso de Goiás, Brasil, (2017), “auroras: pequenas pinturas”, curated by Bruno Dunley and Ricardo Kugelmas. Auroras, São Paulo (2016); “Oito Artistas”, curated by Bruno Dunley and Lucas Arruda, Galeria Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2016).

The artist started her research in conceptual photography and installative objects before starting painting. Her paintings stem from the representation of landscapes, images and elements of the world that dissolve and fragment themselves through different supports and swift brush strokes, spots of flat or accumulated paint.