Rafa Silvares Titanium, 2025

Executed in oil on linen, the large scale work depicts an abstract landscape comprised of viscous mounds that appear to unfurl slowly, interrupted only by the crisp contour of a metallic object: a clenched tube facing it’s squeezed-out white paint; the silhouette is reminiscent of an hourglass and idiosyncratic for the artist’s seamless brush strokes.

Silvares lovingly paints the shiny metal of his human-made motifs with an eye for precisionist effect and the beauty of their abstract shapes. Together, triangles, rectangles, slivers of black, and shades of gray form the impression of seductive silvery surfaces. The metal is a recurring motif that exerts symbolic power; its hard, lustrous, reflective shell evokes the promise of modernity with its scientistic notions of cleanliness and the antiseptic. As with the hyper-seductive surfaces of consumer objects in late capitalism, the painting is knowing, perhaps even willfully complicit in the intermingling of pain and pleasure. And yet the work has an affirmative quality: the silver lining is a belief in color and shape as forces of renewal.