ART CITIES:Hong Kong-Beatriz Milhazes

For her first exhibition in Hong Kong, Beatriz Milhazes has produced a new series of collages and painting that continue the artist’s pictorial language, combining the dual influences of Brazilian and European Modernist abstraction with the vibrant, hybrid culture of her personal heritage.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: White Cube Gallery Archive

Beatriz Milhazes first began making paper collages in 2003 but a collage technique is also evident in her paintings, which, since the 1990s, have combined different elements adhered to the canvas to create richly textured surfaces which appear prematurely aged. In this new series of collages, which draw on the artist’s extensive archive of paper cut-outs, layered forms, patterning and abstraction appear in compositions whose rich colour and dynamic forms reflect a playful, joyful process. For the exhibition, Milhazes has turned to Brazil’s exuberant flora, inspired by the abrupt relationship of natural and urban environments in her home city of Rio. In the collages, Milhazes combines different found materials in compositions whose cascading, proliferating forms are frequently arranged around a vertical stem, akin to a spine or the trunk of a tree. In others, elements are arranged horizontally to suggest a moving, restless landscape. An imperfect mirroring or symmetry dominates, with schematic leaf and flower shapes and repeated and vibrating circles of different thicknesses, cut in half, diagrammatic or solid against a patchwork of decorative, coloured papers. The works adopt the language of abstraction, and, in particular that of Op Art. The riotous palette of purples, greens, yellow orange and gold used in the collages recalls the emblems from Brazil’s exuberant folk culture. This active, vibrant conflicting use of colour, which reveals the artist’s deep connection with the work of Modernist artists such as Matisse and Tarsila do Amaral, also emphasises how, for Milhazes, colour is primarily a construction device, visible in particular in her first ever black and white collage.

Info: Beatriz Milhazes, White Cube Gallery, 50 Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 13/3-30-5/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat: 11:00-19:00, http://whitecube.com