Marina Rheingantz : Dot line Line dot

Born in 1983 in Araraquara, São Paulo, Brazil, Marina Rheingantz majored in Fine Arts at FAAP (Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado) in São Paulo in 2007, where she specialized in painting. Her talent was noticed early on when she participated in an exhibition titled “2000e8” featuring a new generation of Brazilian artists.
Besides solo exhibitions recently held at; Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo (2013); Centro Cultural São Paulo (2012); and at Centro Universitário Maria Antonia, São Paulo (2011), to name a few, Rheingantz also participated in group exhibitions such as Nowhere (Lugar Nenhum) at Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) in Rio (2013), The First Ten Years (“Os dez primeiros anos”) at Instituto Tomie Othake in São Paulo (2012), and the 6th Curitiba Biennial (2011). Currently, three major paintings of Rheingantz occupy a solo room at No Man’s Land – Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, at the Rubell Contemporary Arts Foundation in Miami (running until May 28, 2016). Rheingantz was also a nominee and finalist of Prêmio PIPA 2015, an important Brazilian art prize, whose finalists are subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio). Furthermore, her work features in public collections including the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, the Museum of Modern Art Rio de Janeiro (MAM - Rio) and the Centro Cultural São Paulo (CCSP).
For her first exhibition in Japan, Nichido Contemporary Art will display 13 new works that trace relationships between abstraction and landscape painting. According to the artist: “My work is usually about landscape, but I cannot represent a place realistically. I do not illustrate a place. For me painting is something very opened, in the way that there is nothing there at first, you can start it from nowhere and find a place on it. So that is what I really like about my practice. Painting gives you a lot of feedbacks, it shows the way or even new ways you did not expect; it’s a nice conversation.”
Looking at her work with these words in mind, I understand that these “landscapes” are indeed sceneries that came to life through her inner world. In other words, a pictorial composition of another landscape that takes its inspiration from the actual landscape.
A glance at Rheingantz’s body of work and my mind goes back to the American beaches of the west coast from the great Richard Diebenkorn.　The common feature lays in the clarity they have in regards to what they want to paint most, while they move on to casually covering up the rest.
Brazil has stunning natural scenery. Whether it is the beach, mountain, or a field of grass, that beauty on such a massive scale goes far beyond human imagination. Maybe, it is nature to inspire the young artist so that she can overcome the limitation of the creation process.
I am looking with excitement at what this new and very promising star has in store for us.

Art critic
Takeshi Kanazawa