If it's not for crying, I don't even leave the house: Luísa Matsushita

Galeria Luisa Strina is pleased to present Luísa Matsushita's inaugural show in Room 2 of its exhibition space.

The exhibit brings together a collection of new paintings in various formats, characterized by a unique chromatic palette resulting from numerous paper studies that precede the creation of her works. The translation of the colors from her studies onto the canvas involves a laborious process of trial and error, during which the artist achieves a balance between transparency, tonality, and vibration, requiring the application of dozens of layers of oil paint to attain.

Another remarkable attribute of these paintings is the presence of synthetic, organic, or orthogonal forms that structure themselves into abstract compositions inspired by mundane elements of everyday life. Wardrobe, Everyone Loves a Bit of Grass or Zezé's Staircase (2023), to name just a few of their titles, evoke subjective imagery or narratives, even though her paintings decidedly remain free of unambiguous interpretations. It is precisely in the ability to perceive something remarkable in ordinary events and to transform them into images that are simultaneously vibrant, elegant, ambiguous, and filled with humor that the singularity of Luísa Matsushita's work resides.

The exhibition is accompanied by an essay from writer Duda Porto de Souza, a longtime friend of Matsushita, who traces her journey from the early 2000s, when the artist was a member of the band Cansei de Ser Sexy (CSS), to her more recent experiences with bioconstruction in the state of Santa Catarina during the COVID-19 pandemic. Just like the 20th-century avant-garde artists who, inspired by the philosophy of the Bauhaus, worked across various disciplines, Duda Porto de Souza describes Luísa Matsushita as follows:

"Self-taught on multiple fronts, practical experience continues to be the most robust way she has found to release her inner emotional life. 'Everything I know, I learned by doing. I made music like this, I sing like this, I built a house and made furniture for its interior like this, I managed to eat what I planted. This is how I paint, I can discover ways of doing because I am an artist.' After exploring studies on bioconstruction, permaculture, agroforestry, and native seeds, Luísa built her own environmentally low-impact house. Over the years, she added knowledge to practical experience, in a search that culminated in the emotional lexicon and codes imprinted in the paintings of this show, where everything is related to dwelling and the continuity of creative force in the world."