Galeria Luis Maluf participates in the fifth edition of SP-Arte Rotas from 26 to 30 August at ARCA in São Paulo, curated by Bernardo Mosqueira. The gallery presents "Synesthesia", featuring works by represented women artists including Fernanda Pompermayer, Karola Braga, Giulia Bianchi, and Shizue Sakamoto, who investigate perception across distinct sensory channels: touch, smell, taste, and color. Synesthesia functions as the exhibition's conceptual framework, proposing an aesthetic experience where varied perceptions intersect and deepen the viewer's relationship with artworks beyond neurological definition. Fernanda Pompermayer's ceramic sculptures employ fragment collage, merging natural and synthetic, figurative and abstract, sacred and secular elements in forms evoking minerals, fossils, corals, and imaginary artifacts. Working with geologically-inspired processes and nerikomi layering techniques using pigmented clay, her surfaces achieve visual complexity that balances formal precision with collapse risk, inviting tactile engagement. Her inaugural solo exhibition opens 22 August at Galeria Luis Maluf in Barra Funda, synthesizing recent creative developments. Karola Braga redirects perception toward olfactory investigation, employing fragrances, resins, smoke, and aromatic materials to examine what persists and disperses while activating memory and affect. In 2024, she presented "Sfumato" at Desert X AlUla in Saudi Arabia: over 11 thousand myrrh and frankincense sticks activated by wind, conceived as sensory homage to the historic Incense Route. In 2025 she received the Experimental award at Art and Olfaction Awards and participated in the 13th Mercosur Biennial. March 2026 brought nomination as Art Senses Artist of the Year by Therme Art Program for "Bloom of the Night", research using smell as spatial organizer before vision activates. Over the next six months she develops this within Art Senses with mentorship from Alexandra Murakami, studying Atlantic Forest aromas. Giulia Bianchi, newly represented by Luis Maluf, creates paintings where fruits, flowers, seeds, and organic forms transition between figuration and abstraction, evoking flavors, scents, textures, and bodily sensations. Between September and December 2025 she exhibited murals at Sesc Casa Verde dedicated to Brazilian culinary ingredients, pushing painting beyond visual observation alone. In Shizue Sakamoto's work, color becomes a site of contemplation: trained in violin, the artist constructs surfaces where rhythm, interval, light, and silence establish visual composition. Creating her characteristic gradient effect requires layering up to 50 colors in single works, generating transitions that continuously resonate. Varying scales from small to monumental reshape spatial relationships and invite near-meditative viewing states. Her investigation of chromatic fields approaches formal minimalism while resisting closed discursive framing. Sakamoto has held solo exhibitions at Galeria Kogan Amaro and Galeria Tato, among others.
