Paintings

This series of paintings began during my BFA studies at the Federal University of Rio in 2004. As the course was more focused on studio work, I read up on Philosophy and Poetry in my spare time. I was keen on sharing these ideas with my fellow art students and anyone else, really. However, I didn't want to simply read passages to them. So, I decided to create paintings that would showcase the work of these authors on a monumental scale, using bright colors to capture people's attention. I always wanted to make murals, but it's not easy to make public art. So, I started with paintings, hoping they would eventually lead to public spaces. I aimed to take literary works too obscure, controversial, or dissonant with mainstream consumer culture and bring them to public settings. I also used text to allow viewers to construct imagery through their imagination. My paintings provide ideas, and viewers can bring them to life through their internal dialogue.

A Coney Island of the Mind - Marshal McLuhan

Emerson College, Boston, MA

This mural was commissioned by Emerson College in 2014 for the entrance of the Walker building. This is an ongoing series of paintings using the written word as raw material. These paintings are meant to be featured in public spaces, sharing excerpts of theory, poetry, and philosophy in high-traffic urban spaces. The colors and text are chosen in relation to the place where they will be displayed. This mural was commissioned by Emerson College and was featured at the Walker Building entrance. Photos by Peter Harris Studio. The choice of Marshal McLuhan's text was made in conversation with the Emerson College staff. Thank you to Joseph Ketner and Robert Sabal for this opportunity.

One Language is Never Enough

Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA

Middle Gray is part of Julia Csekö’s series of Hybrids – soft, calligraphic sculptures that hover between fantasy and reality. These sinewy and surreal velvet works are designed, sewn, and stuffed by Csekö, who also hand selects the fashions they wear. For Middle Gray, Csekö repurposed actual Barbie clothing from her childhood toys, alongside select new purchases –both from toy stores and from a seamstress who makes and sells doll clothes in Brazil. Middle Gray is thus a mixture of old and new, with clever allusions to family trees and our ever-evolving (or stagnant) social pyramid.

Vestments 17

Cox Gallery, Beverly, MA

Space is not a neutral and passive geometry. Space is produced and reproduced and this represents a site of struggle. 

Henri Lefebvre

Vestments is an exhibition of site specific installations from three MFA students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts: Jess Anderson, Julia Csekö and Ingrid de Aguiar Sanchez. Titled after noted Henri Lefebvre’s description of "vestments" in his treatise on the social construction of space, "The Production of Space" (1974), the exhibition offers three examples of large hand made surfaces. For Lefebvre, a "vestment" is a shroud or an attempt to conceal a structure's true identity through its outer surface, in doing so, the surface becomes a subject matter of its own.
Traditionally, artists use surface as a passage into their work, to reveal the inner qualities of their subjects, through metaphorical qualities of ornamentation and texture, or the connotations of different material surfaces. For Anderson, Csekö and de Aguiar Sanchez, the surface is used to disguise or postpone awareness of the subject. Anderson’s faux wood is deceitful, its silkscreened wood grain patterns distract rather than describe. De Aguiar Sanchez’s collage is impactful, implying volume and chaos while it is nonetheless flat and rigidly patterned. Csekö’s mural of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's work “Time of Useful Consciousness” is comprised of singular blocks of text so emboldened with color that they frustrate a linear reading of the whole.
Jess Anderson received her BFA in Sculpture and Painting from Washington State University (Pullman WA) and will receive her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston MA) in 2013. Anderson has exhibited at Mission Hill Gallery, SMFA (Boston MA), Laurel Gallery (Ventura CA) and Gallery III, WSU (Pullman WA).

Julia Csekö received her BFA in Sculpture from the Federal University of (Rio de Janeiro Brazil) and will receive her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston MA) in 2013. Csekö has exhibited internationally, recent exhibitions include Galleria Oscar Cruz (São Paulo, Brazil), TAC Gallery (Rio de Janeiro Brazil), Emerson College Gallery (Boston MA) and the British Columbia University Museum, (Vancouver Canada).
Ingrid de Aguiar Sanchez received her BFA from The Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore MD) in 2006 and her MFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston MA) in 2011. Recent group exhibitions include David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University (Boston MA) US Interests Section, (Havana, Cuba), NK Gallery (Boston MA) and Boston Young Contemporaries.