Patrícia Leite

Galeria Nara Roesler Avenida Europa 655 01449-001 São Paulo Brazil (city map) Send E-mail tel +55 (0)11 - 306 32 344 www.nararoesler.com.br

Against the sky

In her first exhibition at Galeria Nara Roesler, in São Paulo, Paticia Leite explores the states of light as the subject of her paintings. Composed of the series Arpoador and 7 other large works, the show reveals Leite's eye before the light that, against the sky, tinges mornings, afternoons and evenings, be it through long contemplations or through a photographic image. "The pallette has very little chromatic variation, and no shaded areas. Sand, vegetation, spume and sea are on one single plain, without perspective. Our eye does not dwell, but rather wonders over a field where economy and not excess calls the shots" says curator Luisa Duarte.

According to her, despite the existent figuration, the work of this artist brings a high dose of abstraction. "Despite the figuration in their beaches, sands, seas, rocks, marquees and skies, the artist's work brings with it a credible dose of abstraction. (…)We can identify a sea, a stretch of sand or a series of lamps, but more by virtue of our ability and inclination to give figure to that which is almost abstract than by an already given figuration." Duarte emphasizes that these real elements appear rather as masses of color and it is the composition between the colors that lead us to see such recognizable elements from reality, thus a mountain or the sea are less constructed by precise lines than by the composition of chromatic spaces. When painting comes from the photographic image, the curator comments that, still figurative, it's traversed by a dose of abstraction, bringing a density that instigates the sight to decompose abstractly and compose figuratively at the same time.

"Patricia's paintings, in my opinion, always arose like the incarnate evoking of another space and time, the possibility, in the midst of the chaos in which we live our daily lives, of establishing a pause, a suspension through the pitch black dotted with white with a lavender line underneath. This restoration of a kind of hope or the establishment of another mode of being in the world, albeit brief, are aspects related to art and that the encounter with this artist's work grants us. Dwelling on their skies or their marinas is making time dance, instead of march onwards", concludes Luisa Duarte.

Patrícia Leite (Belo Horizonte, 1955) studied with Amílcar de Castro and obtained her bachelors degree in Drawing and Printmaking by Escola de Belas Artes da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. After a solo show at Galeria Macunaíma, Rio de Janeiro, in 1984, she received a Fiat award in 1987, and the first prize at Salão Paulista de Arte Contemporânea in 88 and 89. She has taken part in several group shows and has presented her pieces in solo shows regularly. In São Paulo she has recently shown at Paralela 2008.