Galatea presents Leo Battistelli: água viva, a solo exhibition by the Argentine artist based in Rio de Janeiro, opening on November 26 at the gallery’s Padre João Manuel space in São Paulo. The exhibition features a critical essay by journalist and curator Leonel Kaz and brings together sculptures and wall pieces that intertwine ceramics, porcelain, glass, metals, and minerals, exploring the connection between matter, light, and spirituality.
Living and working in his studio within the Tijuca Forest, at the heart of the Atlantic Rainforest, Battistelli transforms elements of nature into works that evoke hybrid organisms—lichens, seeds, constellations, and aquatic forms—linking human gesture to the continuity of the vital cycle. Using clays from Patagonia, Brazilian soils, and Andean quartz, the artist recreates ancestral processes in compositions that breathe, filter, and radiate light.
Highlights include Iemanjá (2025), made of blown-crystal beads; Sobrenatural (2015), inspired by Amazonian myths; Pôr do Sol (2025), a seven-meter ceramic and copper panel; Pepita (2022/2025), a luminous seed in porcelain and silver; Respiro (2025), Hexagonoro (2019/2025), Coluna (2025), Orvalho (2025), and the Lichens series in multiple materials and scales.
“Leo is an aquatic being immersed, from water to fire, in the craft of ceramics,” writes Leonel Kaz. “His works are lived experiences, not abstract concepts.”
Galatea is a gallery that emerges from the different and complementary trajectories and backgrounds of its founding partners: Antonia Bergamin worked for almost a decade as a managing partner of a major gallery in São Paulo; Conrado Mesquita is an art dealer and collector whose specialty is discovering great works in unlikely places; and Tomás Toledo is a curator who actively contributed to the historic institutional renovation of MASP, from which he recently left as chief curator.
