SAO PAULO.- Martins&Montero will present a solo project by artist Rebecca Sharp.

In this new series of paintings, Rebecca Sharp explores how the forces of desire and love, destruction and death, manifest and reveal themselves in the human body. The works investigate the battle—both subtle and explicit—between the drives of Eros and Thanatos; the tension between the control of bodies and voices; between the dominance of life and the wild magnetism of freedom and spontaneous creation.

In her poetic-spiritual process, she combines pictorial and meditative practices. Her work explores a variety of subtle and mundane planes, and currently, the encounter between them: unusual worlds covered by vivid-hued abysses that coexist vibrantly. The canvases function as coded messages, stemming from her internal and external perception. Her delicate and surreal compositions appear almost instinctively as soon as the initial theme is revealed. According to Rebecca, “What I perceive today is that the artist’s work is to create and intervene in invisible universes. Long before the painting is finished, the creation and also the dissolution of a galaxy have already occurred. The work itself is the endpoint of a reverse engineering process, the visible resolution of an initial chaos. It is a logbook, a terrestrial document, an ignition key.” Rebecca graduated in theater and dramatic arts from Goldsmiths, University of London.

In 2024, she presented the solo show “I am a place” at Martins&Montero in Brussels. In 2018, she took part in the 33rd edition of the São Paulo Biennial, Afinidades Afetivas, in the session curated by Sofia Borges. In 2019, he was in residence at the renowned California Institute of Arts and, in 2023, he took part in the Anderson Ranch artist residency program. Recent solo exhibitions include I am a place (Martins&Montero, Brussels, 2024); Terrestres (Sé, São Paulo, 2023); A Thinning Veil (Hexton Gallery, Colorado, 2023); Tools for the Wonderland (Mendes Woods, Brussels, 2021); Trago a mensagem do destino (Sé, São Paulo, 2020), curated by Tiago de Abreu Pinto.

SETOR MIRANTE
Lydia Okumura

Lydia Okumura participates in the Mirante Sector with her installation Metamorphosys II (1981). Curated by Rodrigo Moura, artistic director of the fair, the sector is dedicated to large-format works that propose dialogues with the history and sociocultural context of the country.

For almost 50 years, the Brazilian-born, New York based artist has been investigating the interstice between two and three-dimensional space through precise, site-specific installations. Mostly using acrylic paint, cotton string, painted aluminum sheets, charcoal and pencil, Okumura constructs abstract geometric compositions that project from the walls into three-dimensional space.