SOLANGE PESSOA

As is customary to the artist’s practice, many works in the exhibition are produced through an intense and corporeal entanglement between the artist and the Earth itself, a process of craft and intuition. A series of large organic paintings made with red clay propose a visual lexicon inspired by flora and primordial organic forms. On the floor before them sits a “landscape” of Domingas—abstract ceramic vessels with curved edges made of red clay. A natural extension of Pessoa’s study of the Earth’s materials into three-dimensional space, they evoke both the permanence of ancient topographies and the permeability of the human body.

Impressive in scale, both the earth paintings and the Domingas imply a full-body range of movement, described by the artist as being charged with a Dionysian energy. Their bold and gestural figurations signal the intense and physical process behind their creation. The scale of Pessoa’s work is determined organically, balancing peaceful moments in both sublime and intimate encounters. Together, they embody a libidinal and transcendent power that fuses terrestrial and corporeal spirituality.

A grouping of black-on-white silhouette paintings of embryonic abstract shapes seem to shiver with the anticipation of life. Whether the anticipation is exciting or anxious is resolved in the viewer’s eye. Their ambiguity demonstrates Pessoa’s ability to account for polarity within cycles of being, bridging the gap between existential tensions of light and dark, growth and decay, life and death.

With Earthworks, Pessoa debuts a series of new fresco paintings created using a variety of natural clays as pigments. Rife with lush depictions of fertile plants, the frescoes ripen with a spirit of renewal in harmony with the artist’s perennial exploration of reproductive cycles vital to propel life. Their intimate scale and rich palette operate in contrast to the larger earth paintings, yet maintain a kinship with them through their softened, vegetal contours.

Pessoa’s interest in time is palpable throughout the corpus of Earthworks, but is perhaps most resonant in Lonjuras. The video traverses a sequence of lingering observational shots of nature taken on routine walks over several years. Documenting recursive patterns of textural change in her surroundings at an unhurried pace, Lonjuras presents a meditation on the weight of environmental witness and geological time scales. An unconventional nod to the vanitas genre, Lonjuras reflects on caves and rock formations sure to outlive our mortal coil, honoring what Pessoa refers to as the time of the Earth: a temporality beyond human conception.

In her 2018 monograph, it was revealed that Pessoa’s umbilical cord was buried in her grandmother’s yard. This biographical detail provides a certain context for interpretation which suggests a metaphysical tether between the artist, the ground, and all that rises from it. Conceptual and aesthetic impulses at the core of Earthworks are imbued with a prophetic urgency—a homecoming of sorts. Approaching natural clays and sediment as a primary medium for Earthworks, Pessoa taps into the range of emotional and spiritual properties that emerge from the charged ancestral soils of our planet, realizing a body of work abuzz with its own distinct telluric life force.

Press release courtesy Mendes Wood DM. Text: Danica Pinteric.