By Vannie Gama
It was for an exhibition in Paris in 2019 (my first international ”in person”), that I took an idea off the paper: to make a fragmented work. This work was ”Nyx”, which you can check in the paintings section of this website. Nyx is this expanded painting, with 20 individual fragments, but which participate in the same painting, like a glass stretched on the floor. Below follows an image of this work with the model Gabriel Teixeira, who posed with this work in Brazil.
Between 2018 and 2019, those were the years when two series that ”would guide” my painting were born. ”Figurations of Time” (with the works ”Nest”, ”Fall”, ”Nebula” and ”Cube-Raum”), which was also my first solo exhibition in a cultural center, in the city of Bauru, at the end of my Visual Arts undergraduate degree, and the series ”Relatively Observable Universe”, which consisted of 7 works, exhibited in Paris, during the European autumn. Below is a photo of Gabriel Teixeira modeling with ”Cube-Raum”.
These two series were marked by a ”long” phase, which is /my fascination with astronomy and existential philosophy – of the mind, of perception. Although the themes have changed, the form has remained since then: the search for supports for the ”classic oil painting” that would go beyond the square canvas. All the works of these two series are on irregular supports, whether circumferences, cylinders, or polygons. In the following years two series would maintain this irregular language, ”Space-Being” and ”Post-human have always existed” from 2020 to 2022. In 2023, I was able to explore more with irregular supports, with movable works and installations, thanks to the solo exhibitions of Prologues for Organic Observations (I will place here two of the posters of this solo, one with a piece of the abject work ”Canto das Bule-bules” and a second with me in a photography session).
After ”Prologues for Organic Observations” of 2023, I spent the rest of the year with some separate works, but very time‑consuming, such as ”Iridophores” and ”The Fourth State” (which was only finished in 2024), so that my research with non‑conventional formats had a small pause of about eight months, until naturally, I was led back to it. Both oil paintings are just below and both were projects for two amazing intellectuals.
” It was then in 2024 that a new series was initiated, however, unlike all the previous series, it was not created with the intention of beginning, middle or end, in fact, it was a conceptually fragmented series. It was then that between 2024 and 2025 I created five pairs of works whose names are poems that complement each other. They are the pairs: ”There’s you (…) and There’s us”, ”Your oceans are inside (…) but your tides are outside”, ”The War (…) and The Silence”, ”How do you see me? (…) Is that enough?” and finally, ”Are you sure (….) That is a Phoenix”. The pair ”How do you see me? (…) Is that enough?” gained two other works, after a great repercussion at an auction that resulted in the attempt of a collector to make me replicate the work, which I did not accept, however, I created a third piece, similar to the language of the original pair, and a second buyer, who from the beginning only wanted a ”segment of language” from the pair. This set is of a bird ”of flesh” and an origami bird, side by side, in a ”tree non-tree”, already in the polished format of a piece of furniture or ornament (dead). The series ””Your oceans are inside (…) but your tides are outside” participated in an exhibition in Italy in the same year. Below then, the two most relevant pairs of this series.
(How do you see me? Is that enough? and Your oceans are inside but your tides are outside. Oil on canvasses. First pair with 30 x 40 cm and the second pair, 50 x 70 cm. Vannie Gama, 2024).
Other pairs that, although not so well accepted by the public, were definitely very relevant to me as their creator, were ”’There’s you (…) and There’s us” and ”The War (…) and The Silence”. For ”There’s you (…) and There’s us”, the model was a friend researcher, the journalist Yumi Wada. ”There’s us” took four months to be finished, being completed in February 2025. It was after finishing these two that I made the last pair of this series, which explored another part of the fragmented painting: not only form, as in previous years, and not only poetic concept, as in the pairs of 2024 and the beginning of 2024, but a mixture of both, where one painting ”is inside the other”, being ”Are you sure? That is a phoenix”, both in 2025 – and therefore, all this context for this retrospective.
(There’s you and There’s us, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 50cm each one, 2024-2025, series The Pairs. Vannie Gama).
It was then that one of these pairs entered the ”5è certamen de poesía visual i video poético, ”Un Cop d’Ull”, in the Balearic Islands, Fundació ACA, where it was part of the honorable selected works (an extra selection beyond the winning works). When works that were conceived poetically beyond aesthetics are framed in proposals equally extending visualities, that is when I feel they are in the right places, just as when they reach collectors and galleries concerned with the conceptual and poetic reception of an artistic practice, which in this case are indeed paintings, but could be installations, sound-image, sculpture-assemblage, happenings, etc.
Definitely, an important milestone in this year of 2025. I thank Fundació ACA for annually maintaining this new tradition of a certamen like ”Un Cop d’Ull”.
See you next week,
Stay close to any nature, Yours or others.
Share this:
Would you like to receive the next post on your digital door?
