Marina Perez Simão Lives and works in São Paulo, b. 1980 in Vitória, Brazil

Marina Perez Simão explores the boundaries of abstraction, evoking a sense of awe by layering and juxtaposing colors to trap light, creating compositions that transcend the tangible world in a practice dedicated to exploring new possibilities and new states of matter. Focusing on light and movement, the artist creates paintings that, rather than serve reality, follow their own internal logic, representing alternate worlds and possibilities. 

Along her exploration of “painting where words fail,” she, however, often draws from natural and geological phenomena, shifting colors at a certain hour of the day, or other such perceptions and reception of light – ones often bound to experiences of places, methods, states of mind. Always starting with drawings and then watercolors, she builds structures that evolve into her paintings’ intricate compositions. 

Notably, Simão’s approach is marked by a dynamic, almost musical complexity, blending natural and abstract elements to create interior and exterior landscapes. The artist describes her series as a form of dancing between paintings, with each work existing independently yet in relation to others, like a family or group of friends. This allows the artist’s works to remain open, shifting, and alive. For Simão, a painting is “never one thing or another.” As curator Diana Campbell remarks on the ever-apparent sense of oneness Simão time and time again achieves, “On the atomic level, there is no difference between inside, outside, you, her, or me.” 

Marina Perez Simão (b. 1980, Vitória, Brazil) lives and works in São Paulo. 

Her recent solo exhibitions include Diffusion, Mendes Wood DM, Paris (2024); Z W I E L I C H T, G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig (2024); Solanaceae, Pace Gallery, Los Angeles (2024); Marina Perez Simão, Villa Era, Vigliano Biellese (2023); Marina Perez Simão: Watercolors, Cahiers d’Art, Paris (2022); Onda, Pace Gallery, London (2022); 5 pinturas, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2022); Observatory, Sifang Art Museum, Jiangsu (2021); Sonia Gomes & Marina Perez Simão, Pace Gallery, East Hampton (2020); Éveils Maritimes, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2020); Our dog-eyes, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2018); Miniature, Embassy of Brazil, Rome (2016).