Marina Perez Simão Creates Meditative Art“Spaceship” At Frieze London

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Brazilian abstract artist Marina Perez Simão has designed Pace Gallery's booth at Frieze London as a contemplative“spaceship” for guests. The installation features 11 canvases painted primarily in three colors: three blue, three gray, and five magenta. The booth is configured in an X-shape, with two blue paintings positioned on opposing sides, a gray painting centrally located, and two others on the remaining side, allowing entry from the middle or sides.

Simão, speaking from São Paulo, told ARTnews that the structure is“super open and closed at the same time, but there's also a sense of discovery depending on which side you walk through.” She intends for viewers to engage intimately with her art, describing the pieces as“more or less vague descriptions of strange worlds,” each possessing its own“nature and behaviors.” The artist noted the abstract yet landscape-like qualities of her work, stating,“Nature is a big, complex and vast organism that we don't fully understand how it works, art is a way to approach these things that are difficult to explain.”

Simão emphasized the physical aspect of viewing art, explaining that her paintings are left unvarnished so that viewers can observe their imperfections.“We see so many images through Instagram and digital platforms, which is fine, but we can't forget that when you get close to a painting, there are different layers and textures,” she said. The artist began these works earlier this year, recognizing an inexplicable but natural evolution in her practice.

While her previous works often featured rich, bright hues, these new paintings adopt a cooler palette, drawing inspiration from Pablo Picasso's Blue and Rose Periods and Fra Angelico's use of pink. Simão deliberately chose magenta over more commercial shades, explaining,“Pink is a difficult color because when you look at mass culture, there's Barbie pink, bubblegum pink, and cotton candy pink. I didn't want all these industrial pinks and their associations.” She found magenta's versatility allowed it to mimic natural colors.

Working with blue proved more challenging due to its inherent strength, requiring direct application from the tube with only occasional white for tinting. She also blended different blues, such as cobalt and cerulean, to achieve greenish tones. Simão noted the difficulty in photographing these works, stating,“We had to do three sessions of photographing as the pigments change so much.” The gray paintings incorporate magenta and blue, with initial layers subtly revealing yellow and ocher to create a hazy, fog-like glow. Simão likens the blue paintings to the warmth of summer and the pink ones to the cold of winter, collectively forming an abstract season.

Simão's exploration of darker tones began in 2024 with her exhibition“Solanaceae” at Pace in Los Angeles, named after the nightshade plant family, which included fragments of darkness. A similar silhouette later appeared in a show at Mendes Wood DM's Paris gallery. Simão indicated a long-standing interest in working with a limited color range, saying,“I've been thinking about working with a limited color range [for a while] because color in my work is super important, and I wanted to study tonalities and limit myself, I'm always evolving.”

This Frieze London project led Simão to change her studio routine, removing all colored items and returning to her usual painting spot by a terrace window, away from the door.“I paint standing up and in my socks. I don't use chairs and sometimes I sit on the ground. These paintings required my body to be engaged,” Simão stated.

Source: ARTnews

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