Fernanda Gomes

June 4 will see the opening of Fernanda Gomes’ 9^th solo exhibit at Luisa Strina, 30 years after the artist’s first showing at the gallery, which has represented her since 1990. The exhibit also marks the gallery’s 50^th anniversary. This is Fernanda Gomes’ first São Paulo showcase since her major career retrospective at the São Paulo State Pinacotheca in 2019. 

Gomes wrote her first notes for her latest exhibit towards the end of that same year, as she began to outline a vision of the whole. For Fernanda Gomes, an exhibition is a moment that concentrates thoughts and visions that build up slowly: “I have always conceived of my exhibitions sequentially. Exhibiting is how I advance my inquiries. Getting things out of the house, reconfiguring them in the malleable space of a gallery, is still one of the most radical, difficult, and fun challenges I can think of.” 

The idea of continuity is central to the work of Fernanda Gomes. Having a new exhibition implies mentally rounding up forgotten works or creating new works from the chaos of interrupted ones. It is, therefore, about the idea of accumulation of a daily, unceasing practice, yielding an at once vast and extremely precise repertoire which informs each novel creation. 

We can look at Fernanda Gomes’ oeuvre as an open system that involves a high degree of improvisation and freedom coupled with intuitive rigor. Her exhibitions include paintings and sculptures that make up unique sets, presented in defined spatial situations. Thus, each work ends up being conditioned to the status of an element in relation to all others, as well as to space and light. Her work process in an exhibition is analogous, in her own words, to “putting together a puzzle with no predefined form.” This methodology requires the artist to live with the works in the venue for several weeks, experimenting with different configurations before arriving at the end result. 

According to Fernanda Gomes, light is crucial, since it allows sight to happen, drawing up things for our gaze. For this exhibit, the artist covered up the gallery ceiling with translucent paper to create diffuse, balanced lighting. By favoring the direct perception of things, she looks to enable a freer encounter between observer and artwork, in a quest for an experience more akin to looking at something for the first time. According to her, “Art has this magical ability to make one see certain things. Sometimes, a minimal shift in perspective is all it takes to reveal other worlds, other mysteries.”

In answering the question “What is an exhibition?”, Fernanda writes:

I try to answer this almost ridiculous question with actions more than with words. This question has underpinned every exhibition I have done, so many of them, in so many years. Having an exhibition is the biggest challenge that my work entails. It involves passion and obstinateness, critical self-confidence, and a review of all that I have lived, all that I have done from the get-go when it comes to artmaking and toy-making. It even includes basic vital processes such as eating, sleeping, movement, consumption of substances or abstinence thereof. It is about giving yourself in in a loving, existential, total way. I always wonder why I do it this way, especially when I am exhausted. The answer comes best as I realize that this is where I have experienced some of my most perfect, intense joys, and even more surprising, that I can produce those myself, in absolute solitude. 

I also try to answer that fateful question with words – written! – to try and apprehend something that can only become more accessible mentally. An exhibition is a flexible set of autonomous elements. An exhibition is a concentrated moment, a materialization of diverse times into this instant that will soon disappear. It is the possibility of opening vistas into other worlds. Giving back all that I have received, trusting that I can relay something. Recovering a bit of all that is getting lost in these terrible times we are living in. Ultimately, an exhibition is an act of love and a thread of hope.