"Vertido" Exhibition by Pedro Varela

A Murilo Castro Gallery gets the exposure Spill, new solo exhibition of Pedro Varela, curated by Shannon BotelhoBringing together a unique collection of paintings, collages on canvas, and an installation, the exhibition presents a recent inflection point in the artist's trajectory, placing recurring images from his more than twenty years of production in dialogue with new elements that emerge in his research.

The exhibition features large and medium-sized paintings, collages on canvas, a set of small-format paintings, and an installation. In Vertido, Pedro Varela presents works made with diluted acrylic paint, exploring different densities of the pictorial matter. At times, the painting approaches the delicacy of watercolor; at others, it acquires thickness and intensity. The images lead the visitor through submerged landscapes where memories, architecture, vegetation, human figures, and coral reefs coexist in the same poetic environment.

“The images show landscapes submerged in deep waters and flowers 'made of blood,' both liquids that create a poetic dialogue. Ocean water evokes memories and feelings that can often be more murky. Blood, despite being liquid, carries a fiery principle, a life force, an impulse for creation,” explains Pedro Varela.

While showcasing previously unseen works, the exhibition revisits different moments in the artist's career. Elements present in earlier phases of his production reappear transformed by the underwater environment that structures the exhibition. Cut papers become collages on canvases, cities and castles return as images that oscillate between memory and fiction, while flowers, forests and, now, coral reefs expand the artist's visual repertoire. The human figure, incorporated more recently into his research, remains present in works such as Iara and Jantar, blending with the aquatic flora.

“Another interesting point is that in this exhibition I will present some moments from my last 20 years of artistic production 'immersed' in this underwater environment. The cut-out papers become collages on canvases made with watercolor tones of acrylic paint. Cities and castles return, evoking memories that blend with fictional narratives. Flowers and forests continue as a submerged landscape alongside coral reefs, which are a novelty in my work. The human figure as protagonist, which appeared in my last exhibition, continues to appear in paintings such as Iara and Jantar, but these humans are mixed with the underwater flora,” says the artist.

In the curatorial text, Shannon Botelho highlights that Vertido proposes an immersive experience in which painting, memory, and time continuously intertwine. “Water doesn't preserve things, it transforms them. Below the surface, time acquires another thickness. Contours shift, colors change, distances no longer obey the same measure. Nothing remains exactly as it was, but neither does it disappear. In Vertido, Pedro Varela makes painting an immersive environment, where images traverse different times and reappear continuously, as if the very matter of the paint preserved the incessant movement of the waters,” writes curator Shannon Botelho.

According to the curator, although it is not a retrospective, the exhibition brings together signs, procedures, and materials spanning more than two decades of Pedro Varela's work, inviting the public to both recognition and discovery. For Botelho, "painting makes time a material always available for transformation," while memory and imagination continually reinvent the landscapes presented in the show.

Service
Exhibition | Spill
From the 18st of July to the 22th of August
Monday to Friday, from 10 am to 19 pm. Saturdays, from 10 am to 14 pm.