Following a series of meetings with our represented artists, this week we visited Carolina Martinez’s studio, located at Rua Pires de Almeida, in Laranjeiras, in the south zone of Rio de Janeiro. The area is surrounded by the main and busiest street in the neighborhood,  comprising one of the first large-scale real estate developments in the city – four-storey buildings designed in the 1920s that are spread along a cul-de-sac intersected by a small rectangular square . Detached from the city, the place resembles a typical neighborhood in any Mediterranean city, and as soon as we start walking there, the feeling is that time has come to a standstill.

Currently, Martinez occupies 2 spaces – one of them is the studio itself, a kind of attic located on the rooftop of one of those four-storey buildings, where the artist has been rehearsing a new palette, bringing more vivid colors that have already filled the spaces of newly created works on wood. The search for unusual angles and non-perceived spaces constitutes her research, which is very connected with architecture and geometry. Her most recent production takes the work of Mexican architect Luis Barragán as one of the main sources of inspiration. Black and white photographs of empty spaces have also been an incentive for new creations. Another field of her research is related to the design of site-specific works that resignify architectural elements, activating new connections within the space.

On the other side of the street, at the rear of one of the rows of buildings, a small garage has also been occupied by the artist, who takes advantage of the wider structure by assembling multiple works, in order to propose new experiences on perspective and exhibition arrangements.

Check in the gallery below some pictures of the visit.