![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Bermondsey/2018/Beatriz-Milhazes/76857-high-res.jpg?w=960&h=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1708423831&s=a39bfc6df8abb28ab7ba83c470a7adf5 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Bermondsey/2018/Beatriz-Milhazes/76857-high-res.jpg?w=1280&h=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1708423831&s=e7d7347ef9405e818ed0a275de080b5d 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Bermondsey/2018/Beatriz-Milhazes/76857-high-res.jpg?w=1600&h=1200&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1708423831&s=141fbc50de290180f50d2254ce04a979 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Bermondsey/2018/Beatriz-Milhazes/76857-high-res.jpg?w=2360&h=1770&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1708423831&s=74947fbcc723c7486c0cccc9d9e81a79 2360w)
Rio Azul
Beatriz Milhazes
Rio Azul
18 April – 1 July 2018
Dates
18 April – 1 July 2018
‘I want to have optical movements, disturbing things; such visions that your eyes would be disturbed when you see them.’
White Cube Bermondsey presented a large-scale exhibition of works by Beatriz Milhazes. This exhibition foregrounded Milhazes’ explorations in a variety of media including painting, installation, sculpture and collage and her first ever tapestry: a unique, major work created especially for the show.
Milhazes has said: ‘I want to have optical movements, disturbing things; such visions that your eyes would be disturbed when you see them.’ Creating what she has termed a ‘dialogue between symbolism and materiality’, achieved through a dense process of physical and conceptual layering, her works employ an abundance of form and colour to offer a vertiginous visual experience.
In a new series of paintings, which make reference to the flattened sense of space in Matisse’s paper cut-outs and the colourful compositions of modernist painter and designer Sonia Delaunay, Milhazes continues to employ a bright, riotous colour palette with ‘Neo-Concretist’ and geometric shapes. Circular forms, abstract and floral patterning and solid expanses of single colours are set against parallel or undulating lines; images that echo both the tropical profusion of Brazil’s native flora and the delicate transparency and grid-like features of its modernist architecture. In O grande dia (2016−17) for example, interlocking cog-like shapes, which suggest the interior mechanism of a watch or machine are set against expanding starburst-like lines to create a restless and energetic surface. Likewise, in Sonho Tropical (2017), a series of incomplete semi-circles and circles as well as varied linear patterning draws the eye from edge to edge of the canvas.
Milhazes explores a similar language of forms and chromatic focus in three-dimensions with the hanging sculptures Mariola and Marola (both 2010−15). These structures, akin to a mobile, composed of tactile, colourful objects strung along their fine, vertical threads, cascade to the floor. Combining both found and made materials, they are each hung from, and based on, a drawing which Milhazes cuts out of a metal disc, which also forms a kind of ‘ceiling’ for each work. Every element of the sculpture precisely follows this initial plate drawing, creating a play between two and three dimensions and a sense of diagrammatic volume. Likewise, the installation Gamboa II (2015–16) comprises five, highly complex and densely worked sculptures which incorporate a seemingly infinite number of light pastel-coloured plastic objects – the kind commonly used to decorate floats during Carnival processions – into chandelier-like objects. Initially created as part of a stage design for the Marcia Milhazes Dance Company, they again formed the staging for a choreographed performance by the same company, entitled Guarde-Me which took place during the first week of the exhibition.
The centrepiece of the exhibition was Rio azul (2016−18), a large-scale tapestry installed on the back wall of South Gallery II. Inspired by the work of Brazilian modernist artist and landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, this dynamic, expansive installation, which measures 16 metres wide and is nearly 3 metres tall, is composed of wave-like, linear forms, geometric blocks, circles, leaves and flowers to create a kind of kinetic landscape, as if glimpsed through and behind a screen of botanical and architectural shapes. Made over a period of two years with master weavers at Pinton Mill in France, its multi-hued wool fibres, each one individually hand-dyed, fashion an intricate expanse of lustrous tonal depth and luxurious surface texture.
In contrast, Milhazes’ exhibited a new series of small-scale paper collages, also using overlaid elements to create equally dense and complex compositions. In a similar manner to Milhazes’ paintings, they reference both Brazilian and European abstraction through their multitude of cut-out forms. Incorporating found papers, wrappers and labels with specially printed serigraphic paper in various solid hues as well as fragments of Milhazes’ own screen-prints, their intricate, three-dimensional surfaces appear in relief, allowing the process of the work’s making to be clearly visible.
To find out more about Beatriz Milhazes visit www.beatrizmilhazes.com
![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Beatriz-Milhazes-Po-de-arroz-2017-2018.jpg?w=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682416612&s=8bbf922c93a25d6360d5420d15eb289c 720w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Beatriz-Milhazes-Po-de-arroz-2017-2018.jpg?w=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682416612&s=1c4ac37d8c5bb33edfba78a7ae1e9d8b 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Beatriz-Milhazes-Po-de-arroz-2017-2018.jpg?w=1280&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682416612&s=34a9ebd705f9ea8ec8710cd9617c5614 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Beatriz-Milhazes-Po-de-arroz-2017-2018.jpg?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682416612&s=acbf5106d16f6adebcd73e4c20d3543a 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Beatriz-Milhazes-Po-de-arroz-2017-2018.jpg?w=2360&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682416612&s=8955f6e13d86d648d66159f9540bd29c 2360w)
Beatriz Milhazes
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