Cosmic Garden by Sandra Cinto
Ginza Maison Hermès “Le Forum”, Tokyo
February 11 – May 10, 2020

Fondation d’entreprise Hermès is pleased to present Cosmic Garden, a solo exhibition by São Paulo, Brazil-based artist Sandra Cinto. Born in Brazil in 1968, Cinto has created numerous installations bearing relation to spaces, primarily consisting of drawings with the motifs of stars, crystals and waves. In Japan she has exhibited at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (2008) and completed a residency at the Aomori Contemporary Art Centre at Aomori Public University (2015), and she has held solo exhibitions in the United States, Brazil, Spain and other countries. Cinto also produces public art, including murals for the Olympic Sculpture Park operated by the Seattle Art Museum. She also jointly manages Ateliê Fidalga with her partner, Albano Afonso, and is actively engaged in art-based exchange such as exhibitions and residencies in Brazil and abroad.

For Cinto, drawing is not only an introspective language for sharing personal experiences, memories and dreams, but also an important means of engaging with time and a form of meditation and rest. From her fine lines of white and silver emerge scenes that connect to sublime realms unreachable by human beings, such as raging seas, storms, and the sky, but what Cinto explores in these works is not the destruction or violence wrought by nature itself, but rather the times of emotional reckoning when people are brought face to face with catastrophe and chaos. For this exhibition, Cinto will create an installation entailing abstract superimpositions of the flows of life and the cosmic fabric of space-time, working with gradations of blue that symbolically represent the universe.

The works will be produced through collaboration between Cinto and several artists with whom she has close ties, and the process of drawing over several days involves reiterative rhythms and waves of activity that mutually bind the participants in meditation, producing characteristics that resonate with the exhibition space. I believe Art is one way to connect people with themselves and maybe, perhaps through this reconnect themselves find something deep and mysterious outside – Sandra Cinto Cosmic Garden encourages viewers to engage in internal dialogue. It is an immersive experience, guided by rhythms emerging from a wealth of intimate and exquisite detail, which eventually transforms the space into a garden transcending time. By offering a time of repose in the cosmic abyss of deep space, Cinto shows a fundamental stance of quiet resistance against the instability of contemporary society.

Sandra Cinto
Born in 1968 in Santo Andre, Brazil, Cinto currently lives and works in Sao Paulo. Preferring drawing as a direct act that enables her to focus her time on this concern, Sandra Cinto has developed a rich vocabulary of symbols and lines to create lyrical landscapes and narratives that hover between fantasy and reality. Using drawing as her point of departure, the artist renders intricate and mesmerizing environments of turbulent seascapes, violent rainstorms, and celestial skies that frequently engage with the surrounding architecture to a disorienting effect, creating the illusion of a weightless, spiraling universe. Evoking stories of human hardship and redemption, these fantastical landscapes serve as a metaphor for the human odyssey.

more. www.fondationdentreprisehermes.org