INFERNO

Lucas Arruda “Deserto-Modelo” / VeneKlasen/Werner, Berlin / to january 10, 2015.

Trente peintures récentes d’échelle réduite autour de paysages réels ou imazginaires constituent l’exposition de Lucas Arruda au VeneKlasen/Werner, Berlin, une exploration de la peinture et de ses fonctions évocatives et représentatves, dans un dialogue avec les maîtres paysagistes du passé.

Lucas Arruda creates subtle depictions of landscapes real or imagined, or sometimes remembered from other paintings. Neither ironic nor naive, Arruda’s paintings are disarmingly matter-of-fact, concerned with exploring the material, illusionistic and evocative possibilities of paint. Arruda is in dialogue with a personalized history of painting which includes Turner and Corot, the equatorial impressionism of Reveron, and begins to suggest Rothko and Marden.

Landscape is merely the means to another end in Arruda’s work, the starting point for deeper meditations on memory and loss, history or abstraction. The concept, not the genre, of landscape is essential to Arruda, insofar as it provides a setting and a location for an emotional intensity which may be understood as the ultimate and very real subject of these paintings.

The exhibition at VeneKlasen/Werner includes 30 paintings, all diminutive in scale, created during the past year and a half. The works reveal Arruda’s deft painterly hand and his unique sense of powerfully understated color.

Visuels : Lucas Arruda “Deserto-Modelo” installation views at VeneKlasen/Werner, Berlin, 2014