Picnic on the Grass Ana Dias Batista, Daniel Bennett, Daniel Mello, Estela Sokol, João Loureiro, Nati Canto, and Paulo Whitaker

Starting May 30, Gruta – Espaço de Arte Contemporânea presents the group exhibition “Piquenique na Relva.” Curated by Tálisson Melo, the show brings together works by Ana Dias Batista, Daniel Bennett, Daniel Mello, Estela Sokol, João Loureiro, Nati Canto, and Paulo Whitaker. The project proposes an investigation into the modes of art production and perception, using the concept of an "encounter" and an "improvised situation" as the structural framework for the exhibition layout.
 

The exhibition's title establishes a dialogue with Édouard Manet’s historic Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass). However, the curatorial approach distances itself from the original bourgeois representation to focus instead on a situation of exchange. “The project is organized around an open-ended situation, in which each participant contributes what they wish to offer, resulting in a heterogeneous body of work that connects through approximations and tensions,” the curator explains.
 

Painting and Materiality
 

The exhibition highlights artists immersed in pictorial language, yet each following unique compositional paths. Paulo Whitaker, Daniel Bennett, and Daniel Mello present series of smaller-scale works that synthesize their research trajectories. While the pieces explore support and matter, each artist preserves a distinct technical approach—ranging from the deconstruction of the image to the density of handmade oil sticks.
 

In the realm between painting and sculpture, Estela Sokol and Nati Canto experiment with processes of formal construction. Sokol presents the monochromatic series Yellow Milk, in which she uses layers of photoluminescent materials stretched and superimposed over chassis to mimic industrial packaging, alongside sculptures from the series Blackberries, Blueberries and Other Fruits, where she brings together and creates tension between materials such as graphite, pigmented beeswax and paraffin, velvet-coated foams, and granite.
 

Nati Canto, in turn, produces a biopolymer through culinary procedures using wax and animal gelatin. From this material emerge hybrid sculptures in which the traces of the process appear as central marks of her work.


Conceptual Negotiations
 

The show also features works that operate between iconography and negotiations with everyday life. Ana Dias Batista and João Loureiro exhibit records of a collaborative action carried out in 2022, in which they sculpted watermelons into the shape of brains. In addition, Batista presents an installation that evokes the physical space of a picnic, while Loureiro displays a photographic diptych resulting from his exchanges with workshop collaborators.
 

For Tálisson Melo, the incongruities appear subtly throughout the show. “The bet is placed on the coexistence between the works to produce meaning, letting convergences and friction emerge organically within the exhibition space,” he defines.