Sandra Cinto: May I Know How to be the Sun on Cloudy Days: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is pleased to announce May I Know How to be the Sun on Cloudy Days, Sandra Cinto’s tenth exhibition with the gallery, on view in New York through February 10, 2024.
Since the early 1990s, Sandra Cinto has explored the potential of drawing to create intricate images and immersive environments, often using the line as a gesture to deconstruct the physical and conceptual boundaries between painting, sculpture, photography and installation. Delicately repeated motifs such as stars, waves, cliffs, bridges, and swings, comprise a rich vocabulary of symbols and lines that construct lyrical landscapes, hovering gently between fantasy and reality. With little more than a very fine brush, the artist renders mesmerizing seascapes, rainstorms, and landscapes to create seemingly weightless, immersive environments. In all her work, Cinto conjures great tensions and contradictions: formally, between surface and depth, abstraction and representation, but also thematically, between joy and sadness, fear and comfort, innocence and guilt. Pushing the limits and possibilities of drawing, Cinto's pictographic motifs build into complex narratives, evoking stories of human hardship and redemption and serving as a powerful means of connection.
In the main gallery, Cinto further explores the transcendent potential of drawing in a large-scale wall drawing rendered in a gold palette, which is complemented by three paintings depicting mountain landscapes. Visitors are invited to take a seat on the bench in the room and ponder the surrounding works. The golden color in all the works is reminiscent of the sun, an inspirational element for Cinto. The artist offers a luminous landscape for viewers to consider closely and escape the chaos of the everyday; for her, this is a way of connecting us with our dreams and uplifting our minds.
The galleries upstairs feature works dedicated to the elements of water and air. Cinto’s Open Sea works connect the visitor with the imagery of water, featuring blue paintings with delicate waves. Since her monumental installation for the Seattle Art Museum in 2012, Cinto has explored the meditative potential of seascapes, and in these new paintings, she depicts serene visions of water with subtle washes of light blue. Smaller paintings represent the movement of air, the source of life.
Born in 1968 in Santo Andre, Brazil, Cinto currently lives and works in São Paulo. She studied art at the Faculdades Integradas Teresa D’Ávila, Santo André, Brazil, and later received fellowships from Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2000–01) and Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2005).
For nearly 30 years, Sandra Cinto has presented her work at museums and institutions worldwide including important solo exhibitions at Fondation Hermès, Tokyo (2020); Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, curated by Paulo Herkenhoff (2020); the Dallas Museum of Art (2019-2020); Contemporary Art Center Cincinnati (2017); USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, Florida (2015); the CAAM Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno in Madrid, Spain (2014); Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo (2010); MACUF Museum of Contemporary Art Union Fenosa in La Coruña, Spain (2007); Wall Project at São Paulo Museum of Modern Art (2003); and Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (2003).
Among her many public projects and commissions worldwide, her most notable include Let Freedom Ring at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center, Washington, DC (2023- permanent); The Wishes Boulevard, 2021 Thailand Biennial, curated by Yuko Hasegawa, Korat, Thailand (2021 - permanent); The Rooftop of the Rosewood Hotel, São Paulo (2021 - permanent); Water Movement, Itaúsa Bank, São Paulo (2020 - permanent); Open Seascape at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York (2019 - permanent); Untitled for Murals of La Jolla (2018 - ongoing); The Invisible Telescope at USF Kate Tiedemann College of Business (2018 - permanent); Library of Love at the Contemporary Art Center Cincinnati (2017 - ongoing); The Great Sun, P.S. 56 (2016 - permanent); One Day, After the Rain, commissioned by The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. (2012-2013); Encounter of Waters at Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Park Pavilion (2012-2014); A Casa das Fontes (The House of Fountains), an installation conceived for Casa do Sertanista in Sao Paulo (2013); When The Night Comes Into My Room, an outdoor public commission for Obra Viva/Esculturas Públicas (Living Work/Public Sculptures) at Parque Ecológico Municipal Estoril–Virgilio Simionatto in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil (2012); and Japonism, a public commission for the SESC swimming pool in Santo André, Brazil (2011).
Installation images by Pierre Le Hors
