KP PROJECTS is thrilled to welcome Rafael Silveira to the gallery for his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles titled Picturesque Hallucinations.
Rafael Silveira’s paintings create a world where pastel hues dance softly across canvases while weaving tales of whimsy and wonder. In this realm of contemporary surreal painting, human forms intertwine seamlessly with the delicate beauty of nature, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. The ordinary transforms into the extraordinary, prompting a feeling of harmony between the human and natural worlds. In Silveira’s world, the subconscious, or dream-conscious, reigns supreme.
In a tropical landscape titled Dancing to the Music, legs in red heels stretch and form the bending limbs of a weeping willow tree with tooth-roots as a phonographic flamingo wanders nearby. Another painting, The Beauty of Small things reveals a woman, half butterfly, wearing a caterpillar cloak against pink skies in a field of tall flowers and greenery showing her metamorphosis. Two portraits, Quietness and Travessia, showcase themes of transcendence within the imagination, conveyed by the faces of the two women becoming translucent renderings of the skies and natural wonders behind them. In each of these pieces, the figures morph or blend into their surroundings with an uncanny fluidity.
“My paintings do not belong to reality nor to imagination," Silveira says. "They dwell in an in-between. A place between light and shadow, mind and matter, amidst the wild and the domestic. Like vegetation slowly covering a wall, my thoughts are overtaken by this psychic energy. Birds perch in the garden, just as visions land upon my gaze. I capture these sudden reveries at the speed of a scribble and, later, with the aid of paint and brushes, I engage in a sort of taxidermy of delirium, constructing psycho-pictorial dioramas that transport the viewer into my mental landscapes… It is in this distant mental intimacy where I encounter the audience. And it’s from there that I confront the impermanence of inspiration with the power that art possesses to render something immortal.”
Silveira's unique style deftly blends elements of fantasy with meticulous detail, creating artworks that are as thought-provoking as they are visually stunning. Each piece invites viewers into a realm where the ordinary transforms into the extraordinary, a realm where beauty and strangeness converge in a symphony of visual poetry and joy.
