A Great Horizon
by Marina Bortoluzzi
There is an invisible force that permeates the fabric of the world. A current that connects the sky, crosses the clouds, blows through the veins of the leaves, blows over the rocks, and flows into the sea. A silent symphony, in a self-sufficient, magical, and living ecosystem, not limited by borders, fences, or frames. In this continuous flow, between matter and mystery, Celaine Refosco's work vibrates the expanding nature. The artist adopts an animistic vision, similar to the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, who understands God and nature as a single substance, a vital energy that inhabits all that exists.
Her painting, however, does not pretend to depict landscapes. In an attempt to express what escapes, to capture the present moment, the artist presents us with a suspended, panoramic, or even immersed perspective, as if investigating with their own gaze. Her approach, aligned with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception, does not separate the subject from the context, but invites us to anchor our vision through the experience of our own body. We feel the freshness of this biodiversity, its scent, and its dimension.
Over the past few years, Celaine has been deepening her unique research on the phenomenon of Flying Rivers, masses of air laden with moisture that flow across South America like atmospheric waterways, reshaping the logic of maps and life cycles. This climatic aspect, which sustains the distribution of rainfall across the continent, also becomes a poetic metaphor and visual resource for the artist. Her observational methodology reinforces her attention to environmental impacts and the geographic and biological consequences of the states of matter.
Celaine's career as a textile designer strengthened her connection with surfaces. From the practice of rapport, the basic structure of printmaking, her fascination with repetition arose. This cadence reverberates in her abstract figuration, free from defined contours, centered on the expression of the brushstrokes that construct her vibrational pictorial field. This lack of definition is part of her provocation: this non-landscape anticipates the open subjectivity of abstraction. In addition to the alternation between light and dark colors, natural light and its variations also play an essential role in her creative process.
A Great Horizon is Celaine Refosco's first solo exhibition at Galeria Mamute and marks the artist's return to Brazil after her three-month artistic residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France. The exhibition features 14 large-format oil paintings on fabric, produced between 2018 and 2025; and a fifteenth site-specific work, under construction, made in tulle, which synthesizes the exhibition.
The horizon that emerges here is not a static line, a fixed point, or the final destination. The horizon is the light that radiates from the fissures, providing a field of vision. When everything seems hazy, it's the direction that guides us to where we can still believe. Paulo Freire said that we are beings who need a tomorrow, that is, hope, to create the conditions to dream. Celaine Refosco's art moves along this path: unhurried, but always in motion and with intention, as if she knew that everything is interconnected and that if it's possible to see, even from a distance, it's because it already exists.