Marina Rheingartz

Bitácora

Sin Título (2018)

Rheingantz currently lives and works in São Paulo, but grew up in the rural region of Araraquara where her family owned land. The diverse and vast landscape of her youth still inspires her paintings. While there is a rich tradition of landscape painting in Brazil, the works of Marina Rheingantz distinguish themselves by including the traces of industrialism and modernity. Utility poles, transmission towers and wind turbines are vertical elements that often stand out in the landscape and give the paintings their contemporariness. Roads and highways connect Brazil’s rural backlands of to the busy metropolises. The landscape is in constant transformation, due not so much to natural evolution as to the desires of capital. Although her works may at first seem idyllic or nostalgic, they show rather the reality of modernity.

The different layers of earth and vegetation in Rheingantz’s works have distinct functionalities and are clearly marked by heavy contours. There are also parts in the picture plane that are difficult to read, often at the intersection of sky and land. This is where the painterly qualities of her work triumph, suggesting rather than evoking.

The visited and invented landscapes and places are in a sense detached from reality because of the abstract reduction that takes place. The locations remind Rheingantz of the scents that she perceived and the conversations that she had there, although people never feature in the paintings.
Process is of great importance to Marina Rheingantz. For her, oil paint works like clay, like a natural materials that can be moulded. She seeks to create the landscapes that she wants to (re)visit, but they forever seem under construction.