On the Solo Exhibition at Galeria Lacerdine – August 2025

 

Visitors entering the new premises of Lacerdine Art Gallery are inevitably struck by the large-scale canvases now on display. Amid the resonances and impressions they evoke, those familiar with Cynthia Pimentel’s prolific body of work can unmistakably perceive a state of restlessness — a will to experiment — and a bold plunge into something still in formation, brimming with meaning and unfolding possibilities, perhaps not yet named.

If in Imaginarium (2024), the artist’s debut solo exhibition, the dedicated spaces of Gare — a hybrid between an art school and a venue for emerging artists — offered a sense of wonderment, now, within the elegant surroundings of Lacerdine, there exists an atmosphere of mobile presence, free from the dogmatic constraints of style, heading toward new pictorial and conceptual possibilities. These reaffirm painting’s vitality — ever resisting the oft-repeated notion of its death, echoed in so many corners of the art world. It is no coincidence that one of the central works in this show is titled Tormenta (Storm).

In this acrylic on linen measuring 1.50 m x 1.20 m, the blue — oscillating between lightness and depth — seems animated by a play of brushstrokes infused with sunlight. Within this particular ocean, the chromatic approach chosen by the artist asserts the gesture itself — whereas in Imaginarium, the compositions tended toward immersive fields of color, now they generate small tremors in environments once more harmonious.

It is important to emphasize, however, that these reverberations are not mere tricks of painterly technique. They consolidate an energy amalgamated through colors, volumes, forms, and surfaces, which, even when not placid, offer a kind of comfort to the viewer — someone who, outside the gallery, is nearly a victim of an incessant flood of stimuli, not only visual. Cynthia Pimentel does not deny the beauty of the world; her daily studio practice may now incorporate new processes and tools, yet always through the prism of a strong and personal signature.

It is also noteworthy that the same blue employed in Tormenta may, in related works, lead to desired calms — though perhaps only at first glance — as in Peaceful Day, or to more agitated movements, as in Transparência (Transparency), where something somber emerges, like a long-foretold storm.

In this direction — one now more deeply explored in Pimentel’s recent production — there may be steps toward the figurative. Perhaps not full steps, but rather glimpses, as if the artist were briefly detouring, gaining experience, and then reclaiming abstraction with greater maturity. It is as though she reaffirms the power of this visual language, so often contested as alienating, but in truth misunderstood due to the narrow lenses through which timeless works are sometimes read. Paradoxically, her paintings also speak profoundly of our present, while distancing themselves from literal frameworks.

In this sense, one may find echoes of concrete landscapes in works such as Powerful Blue, Green Forest, and Planctum. As Anne Cauquelin writes in the classic The Invention of Landscape:

“(…) It seems that landscape is constantly confronted with an essentialism that transforms it into a given of nature. (…) The hybridization of territories, the absence of boundaries between properties, are indeed marks of the contemporary world; landscape does not escape this rule.”

A fitting conclusion might lie in the challenging task of creating, with such refinement, the diptych Intenso — a pictorial and visual enterprise measuring 1.58 m x 4 m — which heightens the plastic vitality of perception in the gallery’s mezzanine. Yet the artist’s mastery of red extends throughout the exhibition in seductive canvases such as Colors of Earth, Red Evolution, Joy, and Explosion.

Still, if one lingers before a singular piece such as Mystery — a traditional acrylic on canvas, 1.2 m x 0.9 m — one can clearly perceive Cynthia Pimentel’s expressive ease in creating such powerful and beautiful worlds — worlds that, in their subtlety, feel as essential as they are rare.

 

Mario Gioia, julho de 2025