It is with great pleasure that we present Alice Quaresma’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. The show is the result of a photographic archive of over 18 years in the artist’s hometown, Rio de Janeiro.

At the age of 18, Alice left Brazil and has been photographing the city ever since, affectively, as a way to feel close to her roots. However, in 2014, she realized that this was not just an affective record. By making the movement of bringing to her work these unpretentious images of no technical or conceptual value, but full of memories, surprises and sentimental value, the artist found that she was exploring the idea of identity and belonging as an immigrant.

Throughout this process, it is possible to observe Alice’s admiration for the Neoconcretist art movement in Rio de Janeiro. Through research on Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, as in the book “Cartas”, Alice’s interest in experimental art and the power of art as an activation of the mind and thought, and not as a concrete answer, became more and more evident.

And so came the imperfect geometric marks, colorful lines hand-painted on photographs of Rio de Janeiro, to create works that exist at the intersection between memory and the imaginary field, where facts and certainties are annulled. Each work, through its composition, creates space for the viewer’s imagination. The works speak of past and present using painting over photography, questioning the limit of each format as one.

“In my exhibition Origins, I show how the evolution of my search through my images of Rio led me back to painting, per se, reaching back not only to my Origin which is Rio, but also to my origin in painting, where I started in fine arts. My look of fascination and questioning in the arts began in painting with Cy Twombly’s “Quattro Stagioni” when I was 13,” comments the artist.