Andrea Rocco: Beautify

For her first solo show at Galeria Rabieh, São Paulo based artist Andrea Rocco (b. 1977, São Paulo) has spared no efforts: other than producing around ten large paintings and over 50 works on paper, 1.300 drawings, all from 2015, will cover the walls of the gallery’s main exhibition space, creating an installation-like environment. Titled Beautify, the exhibition is curated by Angélica de Moraes.

In a typically pop operation, Andrea makes use of appropriated images from different periods of history, without distinction between sources from the mass culture and the history of art, developing her own lexicon, which she mobilizes in different supports and languages. Many of the figures from her “wall drawings”, for instance, reappear in her canvases, watercolors and other works on paper, all of them composed by agglutination and juxtaposition, showing her expanded comprehension of collage. In the paintings, this aspect is exacerbated by the use of both acrylic and oil paint, a technic that creates layers of varied depths within the pictorial space.

The second exhibition space is dedicated to works on paper of large and medium dimensions, other than interferences on tapestry. There, stickers, button football parts and a quote of characters by Norman Rockwell join the artist’s visual lexicon, emphasizing the ironic character of the set. An important part of this section is composed by watercolors and collages on 18th century engravings by naturalist Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira.