Walking into the big white-walled, wood-floored space at James Cohan Gallery, Beatriz Milhazes work acknowledges me with a persuasive smile. Her work catch me off-balance; they're a little bit unstable themselves. Looking at her work is a bit like meeting my other self without having any type of conversation, at first charm and bright and then suddenly takes an unexpected zigzag. Then there's all this that you are not quite sure what you're supposed to fill/do with it.
Now in her 50s, Milhazes is not a young painter, though for me she paints like one. She offers a kind of freedom, which in my interpretation includes the freedom to make mistakes, be yourself, play around and to be open about the failures and disasters.
There’s a couple of paintings at Cohan, I never taught I would see the day that I would…show more content… She’s a painter, printmaker, and collage artist associated with the Pattern and Decoration movement, and best known for her colorful, ornamental surfaces inspired by Brazilian cultural imagery. She has been exhibiting her work internationally for nearly three decades. She lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.
Although for anybody else her work at first might appear totally complex, for me has a different meaning. One might see brightly circles, lots of colors, or just some patterns. I have a feeling that there are memories in her work: paintings stacked up with memories, everyday materials, the deep of the color, the lighter surface, the peace I found in them. Paintings like space she has live on, where once something happened or was discover.
Milhazes is one of the few painters I know who are really good at using colored geometries that cross and re-cross the painting without affecting the viewer’s sense of perfection. She knows the difference between physical size and scale. The smaller paintings, are over extended, and tend to die on me but in her case no matter the size, her work still feels and look
