Felipe, having grown up in São Paulo, how did the living conditions of the city and your formative years shape the way you approached your practice early on?

For me, painting has become a form of escape from this chaos. While São Paulo also offers beauty in many forms, it’s essential for me to find a quiet corner, a space that feels like my studio, where I can retreat and focus. In a way, I think the calmness of my paintings comes from this contrast. The hectic pace of the city is so intense that my paintings become a refuge, a place to slow down and create something more peaceful. 

You are part of this group show ‘Enosis’ at Apsara Studio. Tell us about the works you are exhibiting – What would they say about the moments and the affective dimension they create?

I chose to exhibit smaller-scale paintings that would fit the intimate nature of the space. These pieces are meant to evoke a sense of warmth and calm, while also allowing viewers to have a personal connection with them. The affective dimension of the paintings is rooted in their ability to create a space where people can pause and reflect, almost like a quiet retreat in the middle of everything. 

Your painting moves seemingly between stilllife, landscapes and figures that flirt with abstraction. They almost seem like an invitation to voyage – what do you feel these seemingly encounters between minimal ordinary elements reveal?

While my paintings don’t always flirt with abstraction, it’s a common theme in my work because I tend to focus less on what is being painted and more on the sensation it evokes. I think emotions and feelings themselves can be quite abstract, and often, when I give too much attention to the figure or subject, the atmosphere and the sensation I want to convey can get lost. The minimal, ordinary elements I use are sometimes an invitation to allow the viewer to interpret the work without being distracted by specific details. In this way, I aim for the painting to become more of an experience, something that stirs a feeling or moment, rather than just a representation of something.
 

To wrap up, Felipe, we’re curious—what’s next for you? Is there a particular direction or project on the horizon that you’re excited to dive into?

This year, I’m really excited about my representation with a prestigious gallery, Simoes de Assis. I’m thrilled to be part of their team and feel very welcomed by all the professionals involved. It’s a great opportunity, and I look forward to what’s ahead. That being said, I always strive to live my life more than just focusing on painting. After all, there’s no art without life, and I believe that the experiences I have outside the studio are just as important in shaping my work. I’m eager to continue this journey and see where it leads. 

Thank you, Felipe!

Marta, could you tell us which artworks you are presenting as part of Enosis?

For the Enosis exhibition, I have chosen to present three small-format horizontal still lifes made between 2024 and 2025. While the subject of fruit unites the works, they have different formal structures and textures, encompassing many aspects of my recent research. 

Ciotola (Bowl) unfolds in a sequence of bands: from the most obvious horizontal stripe delineating the table at the bottom edge to the subsequent ones that progressively define the outside of the bowl. These curves build the outline of its interior and background. The two spherical forms represent fruits that, beginning with a light outline describing their shadow, achieve more evident volumetry in the marked materiality of the central light area, suggesting their convex surface. In this work, particular attention is given to the direction of the pictorial matter, which, through varying brushstrokes—sometimes thicker and more substantial, other times lighter and shorter in the background—constructs a precise structure in which the painting develops vertically.

The works Melone rosa and Melone propose the same subject, which recurs frequently in my vocabulary—not so much the melon itself, but the wedge, the arc, that specific geometry. The cut fruit defines more or less acute arcs and triangles. In the former case, the forms are closed, and the definition of light and dark is organized through light or dense pictorial regions with varied brushwork—spread and thin, or dotted and thicker. In the latter, the composition is open: different areas suggest unoutlined forms, with light tone on light tone.
Ciotola, Melone rosa, and Melone are three very different works that refer to the same research. This variety can help introduce my practice, especially to those approaching it for the first time.

Your paintings often begin with an archive of pictures or online imagery, which you then reshape over time. Where does this interest stem from? Could you walk us through your work process and explain your enduring fascination with still life?

Painting, for me, means, among other things, revisiting the series of thoughts and feelings that populate the life of the mind and accompany my daily existence. Often, the starting point is the objects of this world that fill the disinterested view of those moments. I don’t aim to portray them, but to use them—to make them a vehicle for this flow of thoughts that runs through them. They are a conduit through which I speak of an invisible, internal, uninterrupted moment, undefined until just before, through a concrete and often simple form. The subjects are bearers of a narrative voice that, through them, organizes itself.

In the making of the work, there is always a starting point: my present, which takes shape in its first transformation from these digital images. These images are sometimes taken by me, sometimes collected from various online sources. They are then printed on A4 sheets, forming my starting archive. During the work sessions, they are used freely—touched, juxtaposed, hung alongside the frame I am working on. They do not necessarily become the subjects of the works; rather, they serve as a visual stimulus.

You’ve mentioned being inspired by artists like Luc Tuymans, Agnes Martin, and On Kawara, all of whom repeatedly return to a single subject. In your case, this often includes flowers, fruits, or other motifs. What draws you to this kind of repetition, and how does it foster an emotional connection with the subjects you paint?

Repetition is fundamental; each work is painted several times, and before arriving at the final form, I make many attempts. Each layer of paint erases the previous one but contains traces of it, which remain clearly visible on the edge of the frame and are registered by the complexity of the increasingly indistinct and rich colors. This process of repeating, over and over, is for me the way into the work—a mechanism that includes quick changes of direction as well as revisiting the same marks again and again, confirming the final form.

I aim to assign each work its own formal uniqueness, and this becomes more evident when the subject is common. For example, the slice of fruit—the melon—is repeated in various works, always in different ways. Each painting attempts to answer a specific question by proposing a new structure and exploring many pictorial possibilities.
 

Stefano Castelli mentions that your work thrives on ‘constraint.’ How would you expand on that idea in relation to your work, and how does the small format contribute to the expressive power in your pieces?

Each work equally considers the importance of the subject as a medium and painting as a means. It thus seeks to answer the questions that arise from the dialogue between these two elements and from painting in general. 

The painting is the totality of all its elements, including structural components, starting with the canvas, its proportions, and its boundaries. The small scale is not necessarily important in these considerations, but as the size decreases, the painting thickens, and the perimeter of the canvas gains importance.

Thank you, Marta!