Bruna Massadas (b. 1985, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a painter based in Bozeman, Montana. Recently her work has been exhibited at The Pit (Los Angeles), Bozomag (Los Angeles), My Pet Ram (New York), McClain Gallery (Houston) and Gallery 16 (San Francisco). She also exhibited in two-person shows with Raymie Iadevaia (2022, Bozomag) and Daniel Gibson (2017, Some.Time.Salon). From 2018-2021 she exhibited with Binder of Women, and from 2016-2018 she was a member of CTRL+SHFT collective. Massadas earned her BFA at California State University, Fullerton and MFA at California College of the Arts (2012).
| Massadas approaches painting with a philosopher’s eye. Her transcendent landscapes, bursting with color, are as isolating as they are sublime. Merging the tropical vistas of her native Rio de Janeiro with the volcanic formations of the neighboring Yellowstone Park, her work envisions a strange planet: a world of abundant space, possibility, and color, but also a world of scarcity. Life, on this planet, exists in solitude. Suns and moons rise over dormant peaks. A bird, draped in stunning feathers, has no witness other than itself. The future of this world in repose seems an eternity away from catastrophe — perhaps because the catastrophe has already happened, and now is the time for regrowth. Massadas’ portraits depict elements of the self, like the make-up someone prepares with but without the body underneath it. Parts of the body melt away as she focuses on garish face paint and imagined personalities. The faces are mask-like yet the outward-facing persona takes on a life of its own. Like Freud’s multi-layered philosophy of the self, Massadas paints the multiple versions of the sitter in one image - she captures the shell that is projected to others along with the complex and self-conscious individual. She says, “if you removed [...] the body and all that was left was just the performance of the self, [these portraits are] what you would see.” |