MARINA PEREZ SIMÃO (B. 1981)

São Paulo-based artist Marina Perez Simão’s Untitled is a spectacular landscape assembled out of multiple layers of color and form. Painted on an epic scale, the present work is a superlative example of how the artist is able to combine memory and image utilizing a variety of different visual languages. On the left half of the canvas, Untitled opens up to a body of water underneath a reddish moon, while on the other side of the canvas, we see green and yellow mountains lit by the sun. The scene slowly reveals itself to us, becoming a layered map of pigment and line. Red, blue, purple, and pink work in harmony, proving the artist’s almost Fauve-like command of both the emotional and representational capacities of color.

Perez Simão also draws from her childhood in Brazil to create her signature motifs. She observes, “Landscape is very important for Brazilian artists…It’s always there, because it’s so imposing. The weather too. It will be hot and then the rain comes out of the blue. It is very dramatic in terms of color and how it affects our behavior…these [are] my Brazilian colors” (M. Perez Simão, quoted in O. Basciano, “Brazilian painter Marina Perez Simão’s bold and beguiling worlds,” Art Basel, May 22, 2023). Yet, her paintings also evince the impact of Western art on her practice. She recalls visiting the Louvre as often as she could during her time in Paris, and she developed a love for Peter Paul Rubens. Untitled evokes the Baroque master’s sensual, muscular brushstrokes, as well as his attunement to the power of nature.

As such, Untitled represents an admixture of cultures and art historical traditions. Perez Simão studied sculpture at the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, and it follows that the forms in Untitled are reminiscent of the surprising curves and textures pioneered by sculptors like Aristide Maillol. As critic Osman Can Yerebakan writes, “Serpentine terrains topple, they ooze and bend, wrestling in a game without an exact winner…They are determinedly unpredictable—yet once settled, they claim their positioning, like a tree with roots reaching the earth’s core” (O. Can Yerebakan, Marina Perez Simão, New York, 2022, p. 11).

Admired by collectors, curators, and critics alike, Perez Simão’s work is included in the collections of the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne, France, the Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and the Dallas Museum of Art. With the present work, which is reproduced in both of the artist’s monographs, Perez Simão cements her status as a rising artist to watch who has garnered international praise for her paintings. She combines her own multinational and interdisciplinary histories into something entirely new, perhaps a forest that grows in an uncharted land. Yet Perez Simão also insists that we see our own selves in her fantastical compositions. The hidden paradise of Untitled invites us in.