Portas Vilaseca Galeria presents the solo shows “In between lines“, by Deborah Engel, and “A kind of hole“, by Gabriel Secchin. The exhibitions take up different spaces in the gallery’s building – located in Botafogo – and bring together the most recent production of both artists, whose practices are materialized in the infinite possibilities of painting, drawing and photography.
On the ground floor, Deborah Engel presents a new body of works that approach everyday life from a unique point of view, among moments of confinement and wanderings around the city. In the process of developing her works, Engel sought a refuge between chaos and order to propose new poetics on the action of contemplating possible spaces.
Among the highlights, a new series of drawings reveals its own spatial pictorial identity, equipped with overlapping geometric shapes and cutouts that are remodelled “in between the lines”. Completing the show are new works anchored in the exercise of expanded photography, one of the artist’s signatures. In the critical essay written for the show, curator Priscyla Gomes states that Engel establishes a crossing between two spaces: the experienced and the geometric. In this flow, the artist dedicates hours to composing successive plans of architecture, fragments of facades and everyday elements that she comes across. Her process dissects geometries, establishes optical distortions, transports the viewer outside and inside of a new digitally erected architecture.
On the other hand, Gabriel Secchin presents around 30 new paintings in different dimensions, arranged in a sui generis setting on the third floor of the gallery. Secchin’s multi-referential thematic universe unveils an atmosphere that seduces, both for the discomfort it causes and for the oddities of the characters and narratives that inhabit it.
This new pictorial set is the result of a two-year process that erupted in desolate scenarios, affective memories, daydreams filled with humor and dystopias. In his critical text for the exhibition, researcher Pedro Moraes triggers some stimulus, in a mixture of poetic and scientific essay: “Of the objects that are already in the room when you open your eyes for the first time, there is no information about their origin. Chances are they’ve been there a long time—at least longer than you have. From every new thing that comes along while you’re in the room, you reverse-engineer the things that were already in the room when you arrived. Through intense observation of the present, you slowly reconstruct the past. There are many gaps in your knowledge — about the room you are in — but it doesn’t matter, because tomorrow you will open your eyes again and you will be in the same room.”
Come along and visit us!
Check through the links below the catalog of each show, which includes views of the exhibition space, information about the artist and all works on display + critical text.
In between lines (PDF) > clique HERE
A kind of hole (PDF) > click HERE
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INFO
In between lines
DEBORAH ENGEL
Text: Priscyla Gomes
A kind of hole
GABRIEL SECCHIN
Text: Pedro Moraes
Period of the shows: 10 Nov – 17 Dec 2022
Opening: 10 Nov, Thursday, 7 pm
Visiting times: Tues – Fri (11 am – 7 pm); Sat (11 am – 5 pm)
Where: Portas Vilaseca Galeria – Rua Dona Mariana, 137, casa 2 – Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Free admission