Mariana Malheiro : Caos com Carinho
Galeria Belard presents Caos com Carinho (Chaos with Care), a solo exhibition by Portuguese artist Mariana Malheiro opening September 23, 2025, from 6 to 9 PM. The exhibition presents paintings in which human figures, predominantly female, inhabit dense and disordered environments, far removed from any ideals of passivity. Between communion and isolation, pleasure and pain, ruin and affection, Malheiro reveals the intimate and persistent beauty of care that emerges within chaos.
Malheiro's central female figures are embedded in richly detailed interior scenarios—filled with patterns, objects, and shadows—where moments of intense communion coexist with instances of self-sufficient isolation. Far from the domestic and ornamental ideals historically imposed on women, these protagonists assert themselves as active agents, owners of their territory and narrative, inhabiting a space where pleasure and pain, melancholy and humor exist without passivity.
Malheiro’s distinctive approach creates painted drawings characterized by thick layers of fresh paint over which she draws with the spontaneity and freedom of a sketch, creating an immediate tactile presence that blurs the boundaries between painting and drawing. Archives, memories, and personal photographs—often in black and white—serve as raw material, allowing the artist to reinvent colors, displace elements, and open new narrative possibilities. More interested in raising questions than providing answers, Malheiro constructs compositions that reveal the latent tenderness within disorder, stimulating a tension between destruction and care.
Balancing the playful and the melancholic, Caos com Carinho invites viewers to remain within the restless beauty of disorder, recognizing in chaos a persistent gesture of intimacy, care, and connection.
