Luck, 2021. Oil and wax on linen. 47 ¼ x 39 ⅜ inches.
Artun (Memoirs), 2021. Oil and wax on linen. 23 ⅝ x 19 ⅝ inches.
Duo, 2021. Oil and wax on linen. 9 ⅝ x 11 ¾ inches each.
Matisse 2021. Oil and wax on paper. 18 ⅛ x 11 ¾ inches.
Exhibition view at the farm.
Dense cloud, 2021. Oil and wax on canvas. 30x24cm.
Traverse, 2021. Oil and wax on canvas. 30x24cm.
Photos at the space by Ding Musa and at the farm by Renata de Bonis.
All images courtesy of Renata de Bonis and auroras.
Renata De Bonis' practice is connected to retreats in isolated places, in landscapes that could evoke the sublime, but also in ordinary environments. In this sense, being immersed in more or less delimited spaces is part of her trajectory and does not just refer to recent events. Painting is revisited now, after a period in which she had been working with materials that came directly from these natural and cultural landscapes.
In her recent paintings, produced in the countryside of São Paulo, the artist presents a plurality of motifs with generous attention to the details of everyday life: leaves on the floor; a flower; or the scene where a portrait is replaced by the cover image of Tennessee Williams' book, which shields the face from vertical sunlight.
Simultaneously with the exhibition at auroras, Renata De Bonis shows a group of small works in the stable of a farm, where they were produced. The set of paintings found in this space are variations of lunar scenes, pointing out to the artist's recurrent interest in light and its effects. Next to the stable there is also an abandoned orchid greenhouse where one can listen to an audio installation composed of field recordings - that draw a soundscape of the farm - mixed with an instrumental layer of piano and guitar and the mantra repetition of the phrase “sono leve” (light sleep), which gives the title of the exhibition. This same work is reproduced in the auroras’ library.
This “Light Sleep” was not contaminated by any nightmare, on the contrary, it reflects a luminous well-being; the gaze continues to focus on frames of familiar scenes offered by the environment and can linger on them, there is time.
ECDYSIS, or when it opens
Guilherme Teixeira
Cuidado: quem paga de fantasma, vira um.
George Caillois in. Mimicry and Legendary Psychastenia
A hand touches the glass a glass a hand touches a glass the glass; a sound that was me yesterday vibrates all the branches vibrates me - I was once a branch that swallowed another. Something breaks, undoes itself from myself, and liquid I dissolve exuviae; liquid, I am the other and a thousand or am I all things. Something becomes a motive for motion, appendixes shift and lose themselves, I lose myself while just being born. A hand touches the glass a glass a hand touches a glass the glass reverberates, and gesture and silence impel me to move: I am gesture, I am silence, I am at last. No one ever told me, but there is a French entomologist who postulates the necessity for a harmless insect to take on the appearance of a forbidden one, and cites the Trochillium and Crab Wasps and their very same physiological constitutions that are born from the fine line between violence and protection. I look back - that is, at myself, and a hand touches the glass a glass a hand touches a glass the glass reverberates the gesture: is that noise, is that silence, is that contact? I look back - that is, at myself, and I see foliage, will to live, a false sense of abundance, the desire for everything; I look back - that is, at myself, and I don't know where foliage, will to live, a false sense of abundance, and the desire for everything, ends, and I begin… I took two steps and I don’t know anymore where I begin and a hand touches the glass a glass a hand touches a glass the glass and sound trembles the stems of, I don’t know what, that surrounds me or my sisters. I look back - that is, at myself, and assume or pretend to understand that I have made myself into a Crab Wasp.
Nothing satisfies this phenomenom and I look back - that is, at myself, and realize that I am not done and I am all that was Atlantic exchange and verbs of the everything that looks back - that is, at them, and don't know where they end or where they begin.
I look back - that is, at myself, and a hand touches the glass a glass a hand touches a glass : the glass is; I look back - that is, at myself, and made glass I accept and assume that I am what I have forgotten - full of will to be glass, I’ve been outflowed -, and a sister approaches: I become quiet, I dare not speak a word to her, and she, who looks back - that is, to herself - returns her eye to the front and make me a reason for digestion: half of myself disappears in her mouth, I look back - that is, to what was, and there are no longer coordinates... Is it about the allowance to be space? And a hand touches the glass a glass a hand touches a glass the glass and soon, from the nomenclature and semantics of the men who built themselves in the xvii century, the name that inhabits my sister's mouth, as well as mine, will be the reason for what is left between one surface and another: all given the fact that, in the will to be everything and continue to be, we end up swallowing each other and a hand touches the glass a glass a hand touches a glass and now it is my sister's turn to be enunciated.
- A hand touches the glass a glass a hand touches a glass the glass; a sound that was me yesterday vibrates all the branches vibrate me – I was once a branch that swallowed another. Something breaks.
Renata De Bonis (1984, São Paulo) is an artist with a PhD in Visual Arts from the State University of São Paulo (2020). She began her career in the early 2000s, having joined the 2000e8 group alongside Ana Elisa Egreja, Bruno Dunley, Marcos Brias, Marina Rheingantz, Regina Parra, Rodolpho Parigi and Rodrigo Bivar. Her work involves multiple languages, such as painting, installations and sound projects. She participated in residences in Germany, Brazil, the United States of America, Holland, Italy and Iceland. In 2015 she received an award from the Künstlerhaus Lukas that supported her research based on the landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich.
She held individual exhibitions in De Aanschouw (Rotterdam, 2019); Lamb (London, 2017); Giorgio Galotti (Turin, 2017); BFA Boatos (São Paulo 2015); Centro Cultural São Paulo (2014); and at the Coletor (São Paulo, 2014). Among the group exhibitions are: FourFlags, Galeria Jaqueline Martins (São Paulo, 2020); 2020, Rozenstraat (Amsterdam, 2020); DDDuuuooo, Tilde (Amsterdam, 2020); A Hora Instável, Galeria Bruno Múrias (Lisboa, 2019); Conversas em Gondwana - Arquipélago, Centro Cultural São Paulo (São Paulo, 2019); FUTURuins, Palazzo Fortuny (Venice, 2018); Elements, Neues Kunsthaus (Ahrenshoop, 2018); 3a Bienal de Montevidéu (Montevidéu, 2016); Festival Arte Atual, Instituto Tomie Ohtake (São Paulo, 2016); Esforço-Desempenho, Galeria Athena Contemporânea (Rio de Janeiro, 2016), 1 (um), BFA Boatos (São Paulo, 2015) e Os Primeiros Dez Anos, Instituto Tomie Ohtake (São Paulo, 2011). She is also featured in the book Pintura Brasileira Séc XXI (Brazilian Painting 21st Century) by Cobogó publishing house.