Lucia Laguna: Apenas meus cabelos são brancos [Only my hair is white]

Opening Thursday, May 14, 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Galerie Lelong, New York, is pleased to announce Lucia Laguna: Apenas meus cabelos são brancos [Only my hair is white]. This is the first solo exhibition in the United States for the Brazilian artist and is organized in collaboration with Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The exhibition presents new paintings from two of the artist's ongoing bodies of work, Pequenos formatos [Small formats] and Paisagem [Landscape],exemplifying Laguna's vibrant palette, and the juxtaposition between architecture and natural forms that defines her practice. Taking inspiration from windows, and the orderly way they frame our view of the world, Laguna uses color blocking and geometric forms to organize her pictorial planes, interspersed with exuberant bursts of flora. Laguna's paintings reflect her Rio de Janeiro home, conveying the artist's personal vision of the world around her.

The works on view, all created within the past year, reflect a recent shift in Laguna's practice prompted by a change in her studio environment. For four decades, her personal and artistic life was rooted in her home and garden in the northern suburbs of Rio de Janeiro; about three years ago, she relocated to an apartment in the Laranjeiras neighborhood. This historic area in the city's southern zone is between two mountains, with a denser urban configuration than her prior neighborhood. As her views changed and her studio space became more condensed, her proximity to her canvases and to her neighbors triggered compositional shifts. Her semi-abstracted landscapes seem to exist in undefinable spaces, both obscured and framed by windows, doors, and tiles. Each successive layer of paint adds dynamic organic forms—often trees and flowers, but sometimes birds and human forms. In doing so, Laguna addresses fracturing of natural spaces in the wake of urban development, and the persistence of nature to exist in spite of this.