Marina Rheingantz. Rodamoinho
Curated by Alberto Salvadori
 

The exhibition project Rodamoinho by Brazilian artist Marina Rheingantz (Araraquara, São Paulo), presented by Fondazione ICA Milano and curated by Alberto Salvadori, brings together a group of recent works that expand her dialogue between painting and weaving, between abstraction and the sedimentation of memory.

In her paintings, Marina Rheingantz expresses herself through color and gesture, allowing shifting spaces and atmospheres to emerge from the surface of the canvas. Thick patches of oil paint appear in their physicality like the warp of textile surfaces and the weave of a landscape. Since her beginnings in 2005, the artist has stripped her compositions of any figurative trace, preserving the canvas surface as the only structural framework of abstract horizons and imagined depths.

Rheingantz’s abstract paintings entrust color and gesture with the narration of memory’s places belonging to the artist’s own biography which, once deposited as stains and lines on the canvas, become universal images, worlds for everyone to imagine and inhabit.

The title, Rodamoinho (which in Italian means vortex or whirlwind), expresses the powerful attraction and uncontrollable emotional agitation that the artist’s works evoke in the viewer. As curator Alberto Salvadori explains: “The paintings of Marina Rheingantz are to be seen and read as something constantly in transformation, an ecosystem to be discovered; a becoming that appears and disappears. Her canvases, with their great and compelling seductive power, are palimpsests of emotions and colors concealed beneath multiple surfaces, secretly constructed and capable of revealing epiphanies.”

Born in Araraquara, in the state of São Paulo, the artist gives shape to her visual imagination— also influenced by the landscapes of her region, flat and parched, largely dominated by monocultures with only a few remaining areas of the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado savanna. Among the paintings exhibited in the spaces of ICA Milano, those with less vivid chromatic tones seem to evoke vast arid lands, faintly traced by the vegetation that persists as an original form refusing transformation.

For about ten years, Rheingantz has developed a body of textile works, initially through embroidery and more recently through intricate jacquard weaves, revealing parallels between her painting technique and embroidery. In both, the artist employs a rhythmic gestural approach, which in her canvases translates into a surface animated by lines and patches of color that act as volumes and masses.

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MARINA RHEINGANTZ

Marina Rheingantz reinterprets landscape painting through compositions that combine the formal structure of motifs and color fields with gestural and instinctive marks, guided by a personal archive of weather events, memories, photographs, and places. Her canvases generate vast imaginary spaces, dissolving topography into minimal and allusive elements. In these expansive, atmospheric works, the pictorial surface prevails over the sharpness of the image, giving rise to an elusive, oscillating sense of spatiality. 

Among her most recent solo exhibitions are: Iris, Bortolami Gallery, New York, United States (2025), Mirage, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes, Nîmes, France (2025); Maré, White Cube Mason’s Yard, London, United Kingdom (2023); Sedimentar, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil (2022); Marina Rheingantz, FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France (2021); Madrigal, Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium (2021); Todo mar tem um rio, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil (2019). She has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions, including: Estalo – 14ª Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2025); Cloudwalker, Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, The Netherlands (2024); Abrasive Paradise, KUNSTHAL KAdE, Amersfoort, The Netherlands (2022); Nature Loves to Hide, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel + Lévy Gorvy, Palm Beach, USA (2021); 1981–2021 Arte Contemporânea Brasileira na Coleção Andrea e José Olympio Pereira, CCBB – Centro Cultural do Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brasile (2021); Casa Carioca, MAR – Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brasile (2020); Mínimo, múltiplo, comum, Estação Pinacoteca, San Paolo, Brasile (2018). Her works are part of major public collections, including: Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Pinault Collection, Paris, France; Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil; Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil; MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museu Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto, Portugal; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, The Netherlands; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Taguchi Art Collection, Tokyo, Japan; The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA.

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Fondazione ICA Milano wishes to thank Intesa Sanpaolo, official sponsor of the Foundation, and Valsoia for their support of ICA Milano’s programs and activities.

The exhibition Marina Rheingantz. Rodamoinho is made possible thanks to the support of Eni as Main Partner.

Fondazione ICA Milano thanks Bortolami Gallery, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, and White Cube for their support to the exhibition.


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Digital Experience – PARTICLE

Explore the new exhibitions at Fondazione ICA Milano with the Particle app and access exclusive content and in-depth insights. Available in both Italian and English, this digital experience offers an immersive journey through the works, themes, and key figures of each exhibition, with interviews, behind-the-scenes content, and much more. particle.art/x/Fondazione-ICA-Milano/Digital-Level