VW (VeneKlasen/Werner) is pleased to present Deserto-Modelo, an exhibition of paintings by Lucas Arruda.

Lucas Arruda creates subtle depictions of landscapes real or imagined, or sometimes remembered from other paintings. Neither ironic nor naive, Arruda's paintings are disarmingly matter-of-fact, concerned with exploring the material, illusionistic and evocative possibilities of paint. Arruda is in dialogue with a personalized history of painting which includes Turner and Corot, the equatorial impressionism of Reveron, and begins to suggest Rothko and Marden. Landscape is merely the means to another end in Arruda's work, the starting point for deeper meditations on memory and loss, history or abstraction. The concept, not the genre, of landscape is essential to Arruda, insofar as it provides a setting and a location for an emotional intensity which may be understood as the ultimate and very real subject of these paintings.

The exhibition at VeneKlasen/Werner includes 30 paintings, all diminutive in scale, created during the past year and a half. The works reveal Arruda's deft painterly hand and his unique sense of powerfully understated color.

Lucas Arruda lives and works in São Paulo, Brasil. He has participated in numerous exhibitions there and abroad, notably La Bienal 2013: Here is Where We Jump, Museo del Barrio, New York; Projeto Paisagems a margem, Paco das Artes, São Paolo (2011); 7th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre (2009); and Energias na Arte, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2009). In 2011 he presented a major solo exhibition at Centro Cultural São Paulo. Forthcoming solo exhibitions include PIVÔ, São Paulo and LULU, Mexico City. Deserto-Modelo is Arruda's first solo exhibition in Europe.

All images: Courtesy of VW (VeneKlasen/Werner), Berlin