Lu Ferreira: Mutations and Transmutations

M+B is pleased to present Mutations and Transmutations, an exhibition of new works by Lu Ferreira. This is the artist’s first solo show with the gallery. The exhibition opens on June 29 and will run through August 3, 2024 with a reception at the gallery from 6 to 8 pm.

Lu Ferreira lives and works in the city of Olinda, Pernambuco in northeast Brazil, where he explores his perceptions within abstract nature through painting, free drawing, collage, and performance arts. Ferreira’s paintings use a technique he describes as washing the paintings, much like hand-washing laundry. After adding several layers of paint to the canvas, Ferreira soaks and rubs them until the layers of paint become translucent, this creates a unique interaction between the layers of the canvas, obscuring and retrieving fluid memories in the temporal interim. This process not only adds a visual depth to the works but also incorporates a kind of bodily poetics to the canvas, where each physical stroke becomes an expression of ephemerality and transmutation. In addition to the washing technique, Ferreira deviates from traditional painting with his material selections. In his works, everyday objects such as bushing, steel brushes and brooms are repurposed as implements for painting on the canvas after the washing process. By using these unusual materials to place his marks he expands the language of each piece, adding dimension and bringing the ordinary to the center of the creative process. Inspired by jazz music and the body's responses to the intensity of "hot" (fast and sharp) and "cold" (slow and low) musical rhythms, Ferreira paints each layer of the canvas as if it were a distinct creation, akin to a filled notebook page. Once this dense layer is completed, much like a finished drawing or a fully written book, he initiates the washing process, gently blurring the canvas to gradually unveil its underlying layers.

Prior to being recognized as an artist, Ferreira was deeply fascinated by the concept of ephemerality, finding meaning in everything that could be discarded as unimportant through new perspectives and idea exchanges. He explains, "I realized that the tissue I was painting had the same structure as a cell tissue observed in a microscope and would be hidden or ossified with the gesso. I've already washed a canvas 280 times, which is a physically exhausting process. But I just want to get the juice out of things; I'm just the driver of this laundry.”

In this sense, his work investigates a wide range of elements, including order, human cells, transiting bodies, object transmutation (e.g., developing a work with crepe paper), and everything that cannot be said but expressed on screen. In Mutations and Transmutations, Ferreira invites the viewer to immerse themselves in his abstract universe, where shapes and colors merge to create a unique sensory experience. Each artwork is a reflection on impermanence, capturing fleeting moments and transforming them into timeless moments. "I want to invent a language through the use of unconventional objects for painting narratives, to create revelations," he emphasizes. The works narrate the experiences that have marked Ferreira’s journey as a black, peripheral, and northeastern Brazilian man, and how his body reacts and ultimately engages with the world.