Caterina Silva

Grounded in a unique visual language marked by nonrepresentational gestures, Caterina Silva’s paintings convey the artist’s passionate sentiments and attempts to control the uncontrollable. Pulling inspiration from female art historical precedents, including the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler, the writings of Agnes Martin, and the art of Hilma af Klint, Silva’s visual vocabulary is rooted in personal memory, mythology, and nonhierarchical gesture. Her primary focus is the canvas’s surface. Repurposing old works and creating new art through a destruction of the old, she unstretches existing canvases and paints on both sides of the cloth. The resulting paintings, marked by a multidimensional, wrinkled texture, exist as both products of and witnesses to her expressive in-studio performances.