Maria Helena Vieira da Silva @ Waddington Custot

“I look at the street and at people walking on foot with different appearances advancing at different speeds. I think of the invisible threads which manipulate them… I try and see the machinery which organises them. I think this is in a way what I attempt to paint.”

This is a travelling exhibition of works by the Portuguese-born painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, in a first-of-its-kind collaboration between three international galleries.  It brings together key paintings and works on paper from throughout the artist’s career.  The exhibition explores da Silva’s unique approach to depicting space through poetic, semi-abstract compositions. There is a labyrinthine quality to her paintings’ imaginary grid-like structures which play with space and perspective and disorient the viewer by pulling the gaze in multiple directions, both inviting us deeper and shutting us out. As the artist described:

“Perspective is a way of playing with space. I take a lot of pleasure in looking at space and its rhythms. The architecture of a city has connections to music. There are long notes, and short notes. There are small windows, and large windows.”