Exhibition "Geology of Form: works from the 90s", by Germana Monte-Mór

A Leme Gallery it presents "Geology of Form: works from the 90s", an exhibition dedicated to a collection of paintings and drawings by Germana Monte-Mór Created throughout the 1990s, this exhibition comprises 21 paintings on fabric and 15 drawings on paper. Produced with asphalt on various supports, such as cotton canvas, tracing paper, rice paper, and tissue paper, the works reveal a decisive moment in the artist's trajectory, in which the investigation of matter, form, and the relationships between figure and background takes on a unique formulation.

The previously unseen collection has already prompted reflection from important Brazilian critics, including Lorenzo Mammì, Rodrigo Naves, Paulo Sérgio Duarte, and Nuno Ramos, and is now revisited with a critical text by Diego Matos. The works reflect a fundamental chapter in Monte-Mór's research, addressing issues that remain present in his recent production. The exhibition highlights the material as an active agent in the construction of images; in many of the works, there is an inversion of the functions traditionally attributed to the elements of painting—instead of the support sustaining the material, it is the dense mass of asphalt that seems to support the paper or fabric.

During the 1990s, Germana Monte-Mór experimented with the plastic possibilities of asphalt, exploring the tensions between weight and lightness, opacity and transparency, permanence and transformation. Applied to delicate and porous surfaces, the material acquires unexpected behaviors: it dilutes, infiltrates, accumulates, and solidifies, producing forms that seem to emerge organically from the supports. In her paintings, the mineral density contrasts with the textile weave, creating oscillations between presence and disappearance. The forms evoke reliefs, horizon lines, mountain ranges, or territories in slow transformation, as if subjected to geological processes of continuous decomposition and recomposition. Her canvases reject any stable reference, remaining suspended between abstraction and figurative suggestion.

The drawings on paper deepen this investigation—matter spreads across fragile surfaces, revealing both its expansive power and the capillary action of the supports. The forms seem to emerge from within, like records of a movement prior to representation. In some works, they resemble bodies or silhouettes; in others, they dissolve into stains and imprecise boundaries, examining the conditions of the form's own emergence.

The exhibition constructs a visual vocabulary marked by constant oppositions: black and white, fullness and emptiness, proximity and distance, density and transparency. Beyond a historical overview, the collection reveals the enduring question that continues to structure Germana Monte-Mór's work: the relationship between form and matter.

Service
Exhibition | Geology of Form: works from the 90s
From June 25th to August 21st
Monday to Friday, from 9 am to 18 pm