Galeria Leme presents the second solo exhibition of the Brazilian artist Mariana Mauricio. The artist works with the re-signification of imagistic memories through the interference over collected photographs.

"During the process I'm always reading, trying to make theoretical connections, and seeking similarities. I made these works thinking about domestic space, guilt and the weights that we carry. However, I only realised that after the work was done. First the work materializes, then I find meanings.

About a year ago, in addition to photographs, I started collecting things I encountered in my daily life, mainly found along the paths I walk. Sometimes I walk seven, eight hours, whole days, seeking something indeterminate - until I find it. It has no predetermined order and no tangible rule.

My studio today looks like a hoarder’s house - and it is!

The process of finding things and photos, in that space, is a second step after collecting things in the street (The third step would be to start making combinations / assemblages). My workspace consists of 5 tables. The objects and photos go from one to the other as the combinations are being formed, in a process of simplification. There is the table of the excluded, the table of the chosen, the table of those who are already “grouped”. There is even a table for the tests that went wrong and could potentially turn into something else.

The combinations are not random to me. I think of compositional elements as line, color and texture – as language. I am interested in formalism, abstract expressionism, the concretist and neo-concretist movements.

In the work "Depths of the second", I use a linen sheet bed, with more than 100 years old (I found it in an old fabric store, it has a seam in the middle and a letter monographed on each side, holes, stains and memories) - on it, I printed the image of two hands, one squeezing the other. The image was found on a 1954 newspaper. This work is a collage, an assemblage, and an investigation of the memories of the two objects, creating a new narrative.

In the work "Wash up" - composed of two photographs - one of a man and a woman. The "scene" is a domestic drama. In the photos, framed separate, the man and the woman "classical statues" have their faces turned to each other. The "broken" woman looks at the man. The man does not look at the woman - but hides his eyes with a yellow spatula covered in cement (material with which it (statue) was created). The picture of the woman is sustained by a tower of white porcelain plates.”

Mariana Mauricio will present a new body of work, composed by photographic installations and assemblages.

Mariana Mauricio was born in 1983 in Rio de Janeiro. Lives and works in London. She received her diploma in Fine Arts from Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 2007. Her work has been exhibited in a group show at London's Saatchi Gallery and is part of collections in Brazil, Canada and Europe.