Anyone who has traveled through Minas Gerais, the Brazilian state in which Marina Perez Simão spent part of her childhood, will recognize the deep red that often appears in the artist’s paintings. It recalls the clay soil excavated by the pervasive mining industry or the ochre puddles of its remote potholed roads. In one of Perez Simão’s untitled works from 2020, a valley of orange is scored with a blood red; in another one (she never titles them), featured in her 2021 solo show at Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing, a huge sun sags heavy over burning orange hills.
‘Landscape is very important for Brazilian artists,’ the artist says. ‘It's always there, because it's so imposing. The weather too. It will be hot and then the rain comes out of the blue. It is very dramatic in terms of color and how it affects our behavior.’ Perez Simão also spent time in Rio de Janeiro and the city plays a role in her work too. Her washy, inviting blues and deep greens recall its iconic bay hemmed in by mountains, while blocks of twilight color are inspired by its brooding skies.
Because of her color’s incredible vibrancy, the might – and sometimes the plight – of nature is a constant of Perez Simão's work. In collaboration with Avant Arte, the artist has produced a tapestry edition for Art for the Future, a new initiative in which unique works and editions are generously donated by artists and galleries to benefit charities working in the environmental sector. In this instance, proceeds from the collaboration will support the work of Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) – of which Art Basel is an Active Member – and ClientEarth. The work will be available for purchase at Art Basel and online from June 16 onwards, and potential buyers can already register their interest via this link. ‘I’m not a political artist – in the studio I’m only thinking of color or form – but I’m a product of my moment and landscape has this political feeling right now because of the climate emergency in which we are living.’ In this context her acid palette takes on even more unsettling hues, demonstrating her mastery of color.
‘As an artist, it takes a while to become yourself. When I started, I had real trouble with color. I couldn’t work out where it was needed. Nothing in painting should be gratuitous.’ As her practice matured, she says, ‘The colors that emerged were, naturally enough, the colors of the landscape in which I grew up.’
She is not, however, interested in faithfully recreating the world beyond the canvas. Instead, she talks about painting as a process of negotiation with the canvas itself; sometimes harmonious, at other moments less so. ‘Paintings for me aren’t objects, they’re certainly not images, they’re like beings, they are alive with personalities, so they need to be born of something.’ Though very early on she used photographic source material, today her compositions are a combination of remembered and imagined textures and forms. She plans each canvas meticulously over a series of sketches and watercolors, which she makes at her home in São Paulo. While ultimately freeing, this independence from existing images scares her. ‘I’m a coward!’ she laughs. ‘I have to start small, on paper, away from the studio. I allow myself to make all the mistakes at that point, with the paper, safe at home.’
Only after this laborious process will she know which works will make the cut and pick up her paintbrush and oils. Moving to her spartan studio, devoid of decoration and assistants, she works standing up, as she was taught at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, the French art school she graduated from in 2008. Her only company as she works is a wide array of playlists, each carefully compiled to set the mood of the paintings. ‘The painting and I are very intimate by now. Everything is solved, and I’m so certain of what I'm going to paint. At that moment I’m free, I want to feel like a ballerina done with her rehearsals.’
The results are almost hallucinatory. Her compositions often veer towards total abstraction, but never fully embrace it. In a recent series of works, exhibited at Mendes Wood DM in São Paulo, each canvas featured a huge, moon-like shape, sandwiched between two landscapes, an earthly one, and a second that seems to crack through the sky. At her 2022 exhibition at Pace in London, she showed a quadriptych in which elements of pink, purple, and green sky, sea, and land seem to mingle. ‘I think a painting is good when it cannot be anything else but a painting,’ says the artist.
She recalls an experience while in Paris for a rare presentation of her watercolors at Cahiers d’Art. A visitor said her work was reminiscent of German Expressionism, something he meant as a compliment. ‘I kind of reacted badly and told him he was [looking at the work] from his European perspective, that these were my Brazilian colors. But I thought about it a while after, and actually, if he brings that art history to the painting then there is no problem in that, in the same way I bring all my cultural baggage to the art I look at.’ It is a reminder too, that the natural world operates beyond borders, and its preservation is a global affair.
Art for the Future will be located in Hall 2.1 opposite Mendes Wood DM (booth R4) and will include other works kindly donated to benefit environmental organisations. Perez Simao's edition was produced in collaboration with Avant Arte. Proceeds from the collaboration will support the work of Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) and ClientEarth.
Marina Perez Simão is represented by Mendes Wood DM (São Paulo, Brussels, New York, Paris) and Pace Gallery (New York, Geneva, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Seoul). Her next solo exhibition will open at Villa Era, a historic 19th-century villa immersed in the landscape around Vigliano Biellese, Italy, on July 1, 2023.
Oliver Basciano is a journalist and critic based in São Paulo and London.
Published on May 22, 2023.
Captions for full-bleed images (from top to bottom): 1. Marina Perez Simão, Untitled (detail), 2020, oil on canvas, 170 x 136 cm. Photography by Bruno Leão. Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM (São Paulo, Brussels, New York). 2. Installation view of 'Observatory' exhibition in Sifang Art Museum (China).