Galeria Luis Maluf takes part in the fifth edition of SP-Arte Rotas from 26 to 30 August at ARCA in São Paulo, under the general curatorship of Bernardo Mosqueira. The gallery brings "Sinestesia", a selection of works by women artists including Fernanda Pompermayer, Karola Braga, Giulia Bianchi, Shizue Sakamoto and others who explore perception through distinct channels: touch, smell, taste and colour. Synesthesia serves as the project's conceptual framework: an aesthetic experience where different perceptions intersect and deepen the relationship between artwork and viewer beyond its neurological definition. Fernanda Pompermayer's sculptures engage perception through material. The artist constructs ceramic pieces by collaging fragments, merging natural and synthetic, figurative and abstract, sacred and profane, in forms evoking minerals, fossils, corals and imaginary artefacts. Drawing on geological processes and the nerikomi technique with pigmented clay, Pompermayer overlays surfaces of intense visual complexity where controlled forms coexist with collapse risk, prompting impulses of approach and touch. Her inaugural solo exhibition opens 22 August at Galeria Luis Maluf in Barra Funda, bringing together works synthesizing different phases of her recent practice. Karola Braga redirects perception toward the aromatic realm. As an olfactory researcher, she employs fragrances, resins, smoke and aromatic materials to investigate what endures and what disperses, activating memory, emotion and narrative. Smell, volatile and fleeting, becomes poetic and political language. In 2024, she presented "Sfumato" at Desert X AlUla in Saudi Arabia: over 11 thousand myrrh and frankincense sticks activated by wind, conceived as a sensory tribute to the ancient Incense Route. In 2025, she won the Experimental category at the Art and Olfaction Awards, the foremost international recognition for olfactory art creation, and participated in the 13th Mercosur Biennial. In March 2026, she was named Art Senses Artist of the Year by the Therme Art Program for "Bloom of the Night", research using smell as a means of spatial organization, proposing that scent structures perception before vision intervenes. Braga has studied Atlantic Forest scents for years and will develop the project over the next six months within the Art Senses program under Alexandra Murakami's mentorship. In Giulia Bianchi's work, now represented by Luis Maluf, painting awakens sensations tied to body and food: fruits, flowers, seeds and organic forms appear in compositions oscillating between figuration and abstraction, evoking flavours, aromas, textures and temperatures. From September through December 2025, the artist exhibited murals at Sesc Casa Verde devoted to Brazilian culinary ingredients, pushing painting beyond purely visual observation and exploring what she calls the invisible dimension of food. In Shizue Sakamoto's painting, colour becomes a field of contemplation: shaped by violin training, the artist constructs surfaces where rhythm, interval, light and silence form the structure of visual composition. To achieve the gradient effect characteristic of her canvases, she layers up to 50 colours in a single work, creating transitions that continuously reverberate with viewers. The scale of her works, ranging from small to large, reconfigures spatial relationships and invites an almost meditative state before the image. Her practice approaches chromatic research through a formal economy close to minimalism, resisting closed discursive framings. Sakamoto has held solo exhibitions at Galeria Kogan Amaro and Galeria Tato, among others.
