Figurantes: Galeria Luisa Strina

Marina Saleme (1958, São Paulo) lives and works in São Paulo. For Marina Saleme’s fifth solo show at Galeria Luisa Strina, the artist is presenting a series of drawings, paintings and photographs she has been working on since 2009.

The idea of erasure is a constant in Marina Saleme’s work. The images are constructed by a process of negation and recovery. Through the alternation of different layers of drawing and color fields, Saleme has been constructing the absence and presence of forms by means of superposition.

For this exhibition, the artist has created 3 series of photos and 150 small-format (40 x 30 cm each) paintings and drawings entitled Garotas (As descabeladas) [Girls (The Disheveled)], 2009?2011, which evoke borderline situations (loss, abandonment, passion and death) involving the dialectics of the image, through the apparition and annulment of the figures.

Saleme’s images operate through the frequent displacement and alternation of focus in situations that are repeated on countless canvases, questioning the relation between the real existence and importance of the facts.

The three series Dança [Dance], Sweet Home, and Passeio [Leisure Outing] are photographs taken with a cell phone presenting unusual scenes with doubtful beings and landscapes, displaying a displaced, nearly invisible or transparent subject similar to the erased figures in the paintings ? an insignificant character, like a filmmaking “extra.”

Marina Saleme’s exhibitions have most notably included the solo show Liquid Paper at Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo (2009) and the group shows O Colecionador de Sonhos, Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Ribeirão Preto (2011); Liquid Paper, Rhys-Mendes, Belo Horizonte (2009); MAM 60, OCA, São Paulo, (2008); Poéticas da Natureza, Museu de Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo, (2008); Arte Contemporânea, Aquisições recentes, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, (2008); and Contadores, Estação Pinacoteca, 2006. Paço Imperial (Rio de Janeiro, 1997).