What happens at the seaside at dawn?

Mendes Wood DM New York

What happens at the seaside at dawn? Mendes Wood DM is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition by artist Laís Amaral.

Thinking through the elements of the natural world most mysterious to our eyes in contemporary urban environments triggers a feeling Laís Amaral describes as “longing for the memory of nature.” The artist links this longing to experiences of recognition and belonging – a pivotal conceptual provocation for the artist as she explores relationships between society and the environment, building a practice and visual language that asserts itself as a creed for freedom.

Amaral’s body of work, composed of mixed-media paintings and drawings, employs acrylic, spray paint, and ink alongside an unconventional toolbox of everyday objects through vigorously layering, applying patterns, and removing color. This organic process, driven by both choice and conviction, explores layers of memory and history as essential steps in the artist’s creation of “paintings within paintings.” Along this path, Amaral’s recurring visual language is malleable, bridging references from various existing or invented systems. Thus, it is natural to recognize familiar shapes that emerge in her work, such as organic, urbanistic, or geographical underpinnings.

Drawing from Amaral’s beginnings as a social worker and her activism within the all-female, non-white Trovoa collective, her practice defies the socio-political expectations of figurative representation. Embracing painting as a non-figurative idiom as an opportunity to determine the artist and her collective’s own set of definitions, Amaral’s journey to creative liberty continuously inspires her to reflect on her origins as a painter whose experiences and influences do not come from a formal background in painting. Often moving against the grain, she recalls the complexity of claiming her space as an Afro-Brazilian practitioner in a field frequently unreceptive to non-traditional approaches.

Working entirely in New York leading up to the exhibition, Amaral has created works for What happens at the seaside at dawn? that bring together a collection of memories and observations shaped by her experiences in the city. Amaral begins by applying a layer of black to her works. Rather than erasing or obfuscating, this deliberate action is vital to her non-figurative approach. Overlapping layers, later scraped away to create new dimensions, are cast freely, often repeatedly, creating a patchwork of visual references. The subsequent steps – etching, marking, reapplying, or overdrawing – are carried out continuously in the studio in a process akin to assembling a jigsaw puzzle, each piece fitting according to her own set of rules.

Amaral relies on domestic implements to remove paint from her works, particularly those she uses to manipulate her own body, such as wide-tooth combs and picks. Initially, she worked with these tools as they were readily available and expressed something integral to her art other implements could not. Growing up, Amaral sometimes attached shame to Black characteristics and self-representations while noting that adopting particular hairstyles meant conforming to beauty standards predominantly dictated by Caucasian archetypes. By working with tools designated for grooming other hair types, especially Afro hairstyles, Amaral affirms her identity and celebrates the legitimacy of multicultural existences.

Notably, the flux and power of water have been primary motifs in Amaral’s life and career. This is true of Amaral’s professional engagements mapping desertification patterns and researching their consequences across social topographies. And it is true of deep-seated memories of time spent with the artist’s mother in Aracajú, Brazil, observing intricate patterns created by wildlife in the early hours of the day along the seashore. Her native Rio de Janeiro, a city largely built by claiming land from the sea, in many iterations of its modern history, has witnessed vast new areas constructed by dumping sand on the coast to make room for urban development. In New York, where she worked against the backdrop of diverse water systems, Amaral observed the city’s social structure, often referencing grids, in relation to its frequently overlooked natural formation and “radical nature.” Outside her temporary studio, she saw how different areas are structured according to their proximity to water and, most importantly, how they are constrained by their distance from it. Water, as the ideological force that flows through this exhibition, serves as a powerful source for engaging with questions of erasure and resistance.

As an artist, Amaral continues to immerse herself in research, drawing connections to many sources of knowledge, including her own spiritual awakening. Interacting with the rich cultural heritage of Afro-Brazilian belief systems in recent years has meant returning to a family tradition that had been forgotten or “washed out.” Such returns stand against hegemonic projects of social organization fundamentally linked to social whitening, a desertification and reorganization of the subjective and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives. Retrieving memory, particularly the memory of nature, Amaral names her first New York exhibition What happens at the seaside at dawn? The transcendent question invites us to study the intricacies of bonds between social and natural landscapes brought to the surface through Amaral’s singular visual language.

Laís Amaral (b. 1993, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.

Amaral’s most recent solo exhibitions include What happens at the seaside at dawn?, Mendes Wood DM, New York, NY, USA (2024); Estude fundo, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels, Belgium (2023); Entre dormir e acordar, Galeria 5 Bocas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2024); No meio do peito um buraco fundo, o mais fundo da cachoeira, onde a luz não vem de fora, HOA Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); Laís Amaral: Cement and Water, M+B Almont, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2022); and Bebendo Água no Saara, Anita Schwartz Galeria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2020).

Additionally, her work has been included in group exhibitions as Eighteen Painters, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2024); Paper Trails, Mendes Wood DM at d’Ouwe Kerke, Retranchement (2023); A Defect of Color, Museum of Art of Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2022); Possible Agreements, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels, Belgium (2022); Onde se espreitam vias somos aquelas que permeiam o abismo em busca das frestas, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil (2021); and Manjar: Para Habitar a liberdade, Solar dos Abacaxis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2019).