Deserto-Modelo Lucas Arruda

Overview
Deserto-Modelo, Lucas Arruda
Mendes Wood is excited to present Brazilian artist Lucas Arruda's second solo exhibition at the gallery. The artist's recent work insists on the genre of landscape painting – a genre that interests him for its openness and the possibility it provides of exploring abstraction within figuration.

Many of the paintings on view consist of a simple line across the horizon; the paintings are at once landscapes (sky and earth, sky and sea) and binary compositions: color fields. The light and gesture contained within the margins of the canvas go through processes of atmosphere change, yet they ultimately fail in their quest to establish themselves within the space in which they exist – the very crux of Arruda’s work.

In the vastness of Arruda’s paintings, one can find shelter from the transience of life and nature’s annulment. The artist’s challenge is more metaphysical than material: amidst a turbulent sky, the light dissipates as it meets the ocean. The outcome of this struggle is the creation of both a personal and universal space, one that is at once ethereal and tangible. These landscapes reflect the artist’s perception of life; an intense vision yet one that is ultimately limited to the confines of the canvas. The subject of these landscapes, meanwhile, continues to be whole and pristine; a place where the artist and earth’s mind are one.

Lucas Arruda was born in 1983 in São Paulo, Brazil, where he presently lives and works. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Os primeiros 10 anos [The first 10 Years], Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2011–2012); 23°33'42′′_46°40'09′′, Galerie TORRI, Paris, France (2011-2012) and 7a Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brasil (2009). He has had solo exhibitions at the Centro Cultural São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brasil (2011); I-20 Gallery, New York, USA (2011); 713 Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2011). He has an upcoming solo exhibition at Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, USA (2012).
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