Maya Weishof studio at Kupfer, November 2022.
Between October and December 2021 Kupfer welcomed Brazilian painter Maya Weishof for a two-month-long residency followed by her first UK exhibition 'Headless' in partnership with Galeria Millan in São Paulo.
At Kupfer, Weishof freely experimented with new possibilities of display, emphasising the scenographic qualities of the work to create a layered environment that invites viewer to move through and project their gaze beyond the paintings. In the space of almost two months, the artist’s studio was gradually taken over by a multitude of drawings, paintings, and reference images from old masters’ works ranging from Bosch, Uccello, and Brueghel, to works by relatively less popular figures like the Italian painter Carlo Crivelli, whose exquisite Madonna and Child (ca. 1480) is decorated with trompe l’ceil details and framed by cucumbers and apples that symbolise, respectively, redemption and sin. While some of the motifs that populate Weishof’s work are taken from historical sources, they are combined with images that spring from personal memories and everyday life. Importantly, her work deliberately avoids the moralising messages conveyed in most classical art; on the contrary, they seem to be a celebration of earthly delights that acknowledge heaven and hell as indistinct aspects of the one thing we can call ‘life’.
About Maya Weishof
Maya Weishof (b. 1993, Curitiba, Brazil) lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Weishof’s practice is interested in expanding figurative visual possibilities in painting. She conceives of images through fragments, distortions, caricatures and hybrid creatures, often revealing bodies and landscapes that begin and end in one another.
Weishof graduated with a BA in Visual Arts from Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR) in 2016. She was selected for the artist residency program of Zaratan Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon, Portugal, and also for the Novas Poéticas, program that included Visual Arts students from all over Brazil. In 2017, Weishof participated in a group of practical investigations in painting under the guidance of artists Regina Parra and Rodolpho Parigi in São Paulo and at the SESI Visual Arts Center, oriented by artist Ricardo Basbaum. In 2018, she participated in the exhibition project Confluências Poéticas at SESC Paço da Liberdade in Curitiba. In 2019, Weishof was selected for the artist residency program Pivô Arte e Pesquisa, in São Paulo. In the same year, she was invited by Cisterna Galeria in Lisbon to participate in the C-Lab artist residency program.
Instagram
