ARTIST / Pedro VARELA
Studio Pedro VARELA
Pedro VARELA

My current interest is to investigate the idea of a contemporary landscape that goes beyond representing a physical place, exploring it as a symbolic construction through signs, images, and codes. This landscape subverts the space-time structure of the classical model, forming a fragmented visual-conceptual experience.

I seek to develop a framework that reflects contemporary landscape experiences, merging analog and virtual realms without clear boundaries. The works take the form of clouds composed of imagistic and textual fragments, referencing internet informational clouds.

Functioning like a social media timeline, yet accessible as a whole, the compositions resemble cloud drawings. The emphasis on analog techniques is intentional, commenting on the tension between the subject and their multiple subjectivities while engaging with art history.

Many works are pinned with metal pins, referencing entomologists’ insect collections. This holds personal significance, as my grandmother, a biologist, conducted such research, making this reference deeply meaningful in my life.

In my most recent work, I have been developing nocturnal paintings that seem to simulate a more classical perspective within a psychedelic nighttime universe. However, they actually represent a parallel world, aiming to reinterpret landscape paintings created by European artists during the colonial period depicting Brazil and the tropics.

Pedro VARELA