For Immediate Release

Contact: Calandra Childers, SAM Public Relations
(206) 654-3158; email: PR@SeattleArtMuseum.org

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM UNVEILS NEW COMMISSION AT OLYMPIC SCULPTURE PARK BY BRAZILIAN ARTIST SANDRA CINTO

Sandra Cinto
April 14, 2012–October 20, 2013

SEATTLE, April 6, 2012 – São Paulo-based artist Sandra Cinto (b. 1968) will spend two weeks this April creating an installation for the Olympic Sculpture Park Pavilion entitled Encontro das Águas (Encounter of Waters). Opening April 14, Cinto has taken humble materials, including blue paint and silver paint pen, and transformed a drawn line—repeated at different angles, lengths, and patterns—into a monumental image of water that expresses renewal and respite. Drawing directly on the walls, with the help of two assistants (Alice de Faria Ricci and Jérôme Cornet) and a few local volunteers, Cinto utilized the architecture of the PACCAR Pavilion as her canvas to create an expansive image that hovers between dream and reality.

The ambitious site-specific installation will feature a mesmerizing view of an expansive waterscape: a tempestuous sea. This hand-drawn image will remain in the Pavilion until April 14, 2013. Although water imagery has been represented in Cinto’s earlier work, the artist made two prior visits to Seattle to get a better sense of the location and the city. In turn, Cinto’s waterscape seems apropos within the setting of Elliot Bay and Puget Sound.

A recurring form in the artist’s work is the boat, an image she incorporates for its poetic associations with ideas of a journey. For her installation at the Olympic Sculpture Park, Cinto has incorporated a wooden boat, purchased locally from the Center for Wooden Boats, Seattle, WA. In the interior of the boat’s structure, she has placed a drawing of an abstracted raft, which is loosely based on Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1819), a painting that has appeared in different ways in Cinto’s earlier works, such as the difficult journey (after Géricault) (2007). Cinto finds expressions of hope, survival and human endurance in this 19th century history painting in which Géricault conveyed in his dramatic re-envisioning of the events.

Community is a very important concept for Cinto. She and her artist husband Albano Afonso have founded a center in São Paulo called Atelié Fidalga, created as a platform for emerging artists to exchange ideas about their work and artistic practice. Marisa C. Sánchez, SAM’s Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and curator of this project, says, “Cinto’s drawings are mesmerizing. Through them, she expresses ideas of renewal while also revealing her belief in the power of art to transform everyday lives. It has been a true pleasure working with Sandra and I feel honored to have had a chance to bring Sandra’s work to Seattle.”

A diverse group of artists influence Cinto’s work, including the work of American conceptualist Sol Lewitt and fellow Brazilian Regina Silveira, both of whom are known for their wall drawings and fusion between two-dimensional wall drawings and three-dimensional sculptural additions. Along with contemporary artists, Cinto draws inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints artists, such as Hokusai, best known for The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1830). Her large scale Tempest in Red (2009) heightens the drama of Hokusai’s turbulent waves that peak in rich white caps. Cinto also draws on history, which she uses as a base to create visual interpretations and commentary on contemporary society. Her modest materials, often a ball point or paint pens, highlight her desire to convert simple into profound.

Cinto has shown internationally, including exhibits in Argentina, France, Portugal, Spain, and the United States. She was selected for inclusion in the XXIV Bienal Internacional of São Paulo in 1998; Elysian Fields, a group show at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France in 2000; TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American Art, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA in 2007–2008, and the 2nd Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan: Latin American and the Caribbean, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Jens Hoffmann and Julieta Gonzalez, San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2009, among other notable solo and group shows. She is represented by Casa Triângulo Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, where she had her fourth solo show in March 2011. Her work is the collections of Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art; Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, among others. In May 2012, she will have a solo show at the Philips Collection Washington, D.C.

This exhibition is organized by the Seattle Art Museum. A lead grant is provided by The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.