Paintings

Everyday objects, old furniture, glasses, mirrors, magnets and more turned into modern art

Who: Fernanda Gomes is a Brazilian artist born in Rio de Janeiro where she lives and works. She has been featured at Pavilhão Branco Museu da Cidade in Lisbon, Portugal, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Oficina para Proyectos de Arte A.C. in Guadalajara, Mexico, and at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, as well as in many other galleries and museums spanning the globe.

What she is known for: Fernanda Gomes creates art with all kinds of leftover materials including everyday objects, old furniture, glasses, mirrors, magnets, various types of string, hair, cigarette ends, coins and newspaper.

About her creative process, Gomes reveals in an email interview for BOMB – Artists in Conversation that she tries “often to blank my mind, and then move, randomly, look and wait, just do something vague and unimportant, keep on moving, looking, moving, not for any result, simply playing with things.”

What’s being said about her: In an article in Flash Art Magazine, reporter Laura Mclean-Ferris writes about Fernanda Gomes:

We notice a space most fully when we first walk into it: the crack in the wall, the particular light, the colors of the floor, the position of the building in relation to its environs. Our attention is focused in these early minutes in a space, and yet thee ore time we spend there, the less we tend to notice.

Gomes’ work gifts back to us this early attractiveness that has slipped away. With such interventions, delicately based on lines and geometric shapes, the form that comes quickly to mind is punctuation. Gomes’ sculptures provide a way of seeing and experiencing space that facilitates pauses for breath, breaks, annotations, pointers and emphases.

Photo courtesy of Alison Jacques Gallery. Untitled, 2013. Wood, ball, nails Overall dimensions: 14 x 28.3 x 13.5 cm / 5 1/2 x 11 1/8 x 5 1/4 inches. Each wooden panel: 28.3 x 13.5 x 0.5 cm / 11 1/8 x 5 1/4 x 1/4 inches.

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Works of Fernanda Gomes are included in the exhibition Obras at Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin, Texas. The exhibition, curated by firm principal Lea Weingarten, features sculptures and installations by nine contemporary Brazilian artists. On view from Jan. 23 through March. 26.