Antonio Malta Campos

22/03/2018 - 12/05/2018

Galeria Leme presents the second solo exhibition of Antonio Malta Campos in its space. It is the first time the artist shows his paintings in São Paulo, after his participation in the 32nd São Paulo Biennial in 2016. For this exhibition, Antonio Malta presents a set of nine recent paintings where he deepens his pictorial and compositional exploration.

Antonio Malta’s process of elaborating his works is the result of a game of forces between method and improvisation. The artist structures his paintings starting from successive layers of color fields that overlap and grow organically and intuitively. On top of these stratums he depicts a series of elements that float in a gravitational relation with each other. Forms in metamorphosis, between the residue of a figurative possibility and its deformation and emancipation from any prescribed meaning. The perception of the general composition subsequently makes way for the discernment of the narratives that arise from the correlation of each one of the parts. And even in compositions without explicit figuration, the visitor is invited to speculate imaginatively about the possible meanings contained within the work’s elements.

For this exhibition Antonio Malta Campos created his paintings not only thinking in the internal compositions of each work but also in the relation that these establish between each other. The compositional logic of ‘figure-background’ that exists in each of his canvases is reflected to the macro-scale of the exhibition. There, each one of the works is carefully elaborated and positioned to be seen in relation to the others and in order to establish a deep chromatic and compositional dialogue amongst them. Therefore, the artist expands the logic of his paintings beyond the limits of their canvases and applies it to the totality of the exhibition.

About the artist:

Antonio Malta Campos. São Paulo, Brazil, 1961. Lives and works in São Paulo.

Selected individual exhibitions: F2 Galería, Madrid, Spain; Galeria SIM, Curitiba, Brazil (2017); Watercolors, Galeria Leme, São Paulo, Brazil (2016); Antonio Malta, Galeria Pilar, São Paulo, Brazil (2014); Antonio Malta and Erika Verzutti, Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2012), among others.

Selected collective exhibitions: Live Uncertainty, 32nd São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil; The Many and the One: Brazilian Contemporary Art in the Andrea and José Olympio Pereira Collection, Tomie Ohtake Institute, São Paulo, Brazil (2016); A private collection – Contemporary art in the collection of the Pinacoteca. Pinacoteca of the State of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2015); Pangaea: New Art from Africa and Latin America. Saatchi Gallery, London, England (2014), among others.

His work integrates collections such as: Pinacoteca of the State of São Paulo, Brazil; MAR – Rio Museum of Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Saatchi Collection, London, England; Colección olorVISUAL, Barcelona, ​​Spain.