Nara Roesler New York presents Mirroring Nature, a group exhibition bringing together works by Amelia Toledo, Brígida Baltar, Bruno Dunley, Cao Guimarães, Dávila & Portillo, Cássio Vasconcellos, Jonathas de Andrade, Karin Lambrecht, Laura Vinci, Manoela Medeiros, Marcelo Silveira, Gego, Amparo de la Sota, Maria Klabin, and Gerardo Rosales. On view from July 16 through August 22, 2026, the exhibition considers nature not merely as a subject or landscape, but as a constellation of phenomena, forces, and forms of life through which the world is structured and continually transformed.
In Amelia Toledo’s sculptures from the Dragão cantor series, Laura Vinci’s Folhas avulsas #1, Galhinho, and Muda, Manoela Medeiros’s phytoliths, and Marcelo Silveira’s fire-marked cajacatinga wood, mineral and plant matter meet in distinct states of transformation. Meanwhile, the documentation of A coleta da neblina, Brígida Baltar’s brick-dust works, alongside the embroideries from A pele da planta, Conexiones, a hand embroidery by Amparo de la Sota, and Gego’s Drawing Without Paper #11, transform the surface into a space where time, gesture, and matter are embedded, evoking rhizomatic, synaptic, cellular, or inner organic configurations.
Through photography, the exhibition brings together different scales of observation. In Clinâmen, Cao Guimarães revisits the notion of ‘minimal deviation’ developed by the Greek philosopher Epicurus to explain the dynamism of atoms, whereby small, unpredictable shifts in movement make the formation of worlds possible. In O espírito das águas, Jonathas de Andrade begins with the proximity between fish and fishermen to expand his investigation into the relationship between the human body and aquatic environments. Through themes of life, death, water, air, and contact between species, the work reveals a world where affection and violence are intertwined.
In Viagem Pitoresca pelo Brasil #142, Cássio Vasconcellos revisits the tradition of artistic and scientific expeditions that documented a then little-known territory, questioning the ways in which the Atlantic Forest was framed and transformed into landscape. Nebula, an intricate and complex weaving by Dávila & Portillo, reveals through its astrophysical title both the clouds of celestial dust and the starry night that modern artists transformed into an all-over visual language.
In visual arts, nature does not only appear as an external world to be reproduced, but as a repertoire of materials, forms, and processes. Natural forms and materials can be either figured, as in Troféu III by Bruno Dunley, operating within the very construction of the image, or physically used and transformed, as in Fragmento, where Karin Lambrecht combines pigments in acrylic emulsion and vegetal charcoal on canvas, bringing organic matter onto the surface of the work. Nature appears as representational and mimetic in Maria Klabin’s observations of fruits and landscapes, or as symbolic and allegorical in the works on paper Culebra y llantén, Icaco, Planta 1, Hormiga culona, Lineas cruzadas, Fence-A, and Frailejones, in which Gerardo Rosales brings together plants, snakes, and insects in images that combine observation, popular culture, fabulation, and a contemporary queer imaginary.
Founded in São Paulo in 1989, Galeria Nara Roesler is a leading Brazilian gallery dedicated to showing the work of contemporary Brazilian and international artists. The gallery established another branch in Rio de Janeiro in 2014, followed by its first international outpost in New York City in 2015.
