Exhibition "Thank Goodness I Crossed the Clouds", by Gabriela Machado

A Luciana Brito Gallery opens its 2026 program with the exhibition Thank goodness I crossed the clouds., the artist's second Gabriela Machado in the gallery. The exhibition highlights previously unseen, larger-scale paintings – in dialogue with smaller ones – created between 2024 and 2026, occupying the entire space of the Pavilion. The critical text is written by Amanda Abi Khalil.

The chronicles of daily life, real and dreamlike scenarios, the temperature and brilliance of colors, the sensations of everyday life. Nothing escapes the sieve of a sensitive imagination that guides Gabriela Machado's gaze. The artist selects what is most attractive to her and translates it into pictorial language. In this set of previously unseen paintings, produced in recent years, she articulates fragments of stories and memories, as well as landscape scenes captured on her travels. These small events, scenes, or observations of life, although banal at first glance, gain meaning, density, and poetry when reinterpreted by the artist.

Unlike her first exhibition at the gallery, held in 2024, the paintings in Ainda Bem, Atravessei as Nuvens (Thank Goodness, I Crossed the Clouds) are now more figurative, revealing a hybrid interplay that articulates not only the immediate perception of what the eye sees, but also the artist's imagination and memory. The fantastic circus universe, for example, emerges in several works, such as Marambaia (2026) and Ainda Bem, Atravessei as Nuvens (2026), in which the figure of the lion is portrayed from a childhood repertoire shared by her generation.

In other, smaller-format paintings, landscapes appear that combine sky, vegetation, and sea, as well as portraits of objects and sculptures. In all of them, however, the artist emphasizes luminosity and brightness, elements that immediately impose themselves on the viewer's eye and translate an atmosphere of lightness and mystery deliberately constructed. In the works Largo do Machado (2026), Luzinhas (2014–2025), and Veronese (2013–2025), Christmas lights take center stage. As the artist explains, the luminous effect is deliberately produced during the production process: in a first stage she works with acrylic paint, and then finishes with oil paint.

The pink background seen in some paintings, such as Ginger (2026), was inspired by the shade of construction site hoardings. Another relevant detail is the frame reproduced by the artist in some smaller works, functioning as an extension of the painting and contributing to the creation of greater spatial depth.

Service
Exhibition Thank goodness I crossed the clouds.
From February 05th to March 21th
Monday, 10am to 18pm; Tuesday to Friday, 10am to 19pm; Saturday, 11am to 17pm.