Paula Turmina: Membrane

SENS Gallery is pleased to announce Membrane, a solo exhibition featuring the work of Brazilian artist Paula Turmina. The exhibition runs from 31st March to 29th April 2023. Turmina’s work features the connection between biological and natural bodies with the earth on which they inhabit. Her works encourage the viewer to reflect on humanity’s role in this complex relationship and how it has changed throughout history.

Elongated beings and insects traverse the crimson, post-apocalyptic plains. They serve as and operate within “membranes”, merging to the ground on which they stand upon, and threading the contradiction between renewing the soil and extracting from it. These dystopian lands questions the need of escapism and find salvation in frontiers beyond, yet they may never fully disconnect from the earth, for their physicality will remain in tandem with the ground they are familiar with. The scenes depicted in Turmina’s work invites questions about the dialectical relationship between human beings and the earth. Shades of red encompass the canvas, a symbol of the past and the future. Like the Martian landscape and the barks of the Brazilwood tree, the colour highlights the artist’s abstract attempts on tackling Brazil’s colonial history and the repercussions of exploiting natural resources. Simultaneously, red envisions the state of the future: the incorporation of modern human society and their constant need for natural resources brings upon the issue of the dilapidated state of the earth.

Turmina’s practice is conceived from an idea or a material in mind but creates artwork intuitively. Using a warm palette of reds and golds, she visualises an atmosphere that conveys feelings of beings struggling with existence across time, yet ultimately not giving up hope despite the looming end of the world. Painting is a vessel bound to the physical, a medium to merge fact and fiction. The material that she paints upon is a stage for her images to develop different perspectives but fundamentally represents her advocacy for environmentalism.

Paula Turmina (b. 1991) is a Brazilian artist who lives and works in London. She received a BA in Fine Art Painting at the Wimbledon College of Fine Arts in 2016 and is a graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art in 2021, receiving an MA in Fine Art. Her works guides the viewer into otherworldly images of red, barren terrains inhabited by the characters who interact with the nature surrounding them.

Paula is a multidisciplinary artist, her portfolio involving painting, printmaking, analogue films, and writing. Her use of the colour red stemmed from a special kind of natural mineral brought from Brazil, allowing her to explore the plasticity of the material and to experiment with the pigment. Through this earthly material, she emphasizes the process of painting landscapes that reflect on humanity’s relationship with the earth.

Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions such as ‘Tomorrow is tomorrow is tomorrow’ at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery (London, 2023), ‘There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns’ at Mama Projects (Paris, 2022), ‘In transit, our memory fragments’ at Chelsea Space (London, 2022), ‘The Red Room’ at Berntson Bhattacharjee Gallery (London, 2022), ‘Wish Lush’ at Kravtiz Contemporary (London, 2022) and ‘Decomposition and Fetish’ at Vivian Caccuri Atelier (Rio de Janeiro, 2022), ‘Spiral Trap’ at Lewisham Art House (London, 2021), ‘In Reverie’ at Acava Studios (London, 2021), ‘The Land of No Evil’ at Offshoot Gallery (London, 2019), ‘Neo Norte’ at Fundacion Cultural de Providencia (Santiago, Chile, 2018) and ‘The Six Senses’ at Galeria Melissa (New York, 2018). Her works are included in the collection of Xiao Museum and other relevant private collections.