GAGOSIAN PRESENTS ADRIANA VAREJAO ‘HISTORIAS MOLDADAS’

You walk into warmth—into earth, water, ruin, and myth. The surfaces crack, not from age but from life: like lightning, tree branches, riverbeds. In Histórias Moldadas, Adriana Varejão conjures the ancient intelligence of nature, where every fissure is a form of knowledge. Her paintings echo with the textures of ceramics from Brazil to China, Greece to Turkey—tiles that have crossed oceans and empires, carrying stories in their glaze.

Varejão’s work is both sculptural and painterly, grounded in the hand-mixed plaster she lets dry and break apart, inviting chance into the process. Each piece is steeped in the weight of history—colonial, mythological, personal—yet feels alive in the present. Cracks become calligraphy, surfaces become skin. Blues ripple like the sea, reds burn like earth, and celadon greens breathe like clouded skies. In these layered forms, we glimpse something timeless: art as a vessel of memory, resilience, and the quiet power of transformation