Maria Calandra
Outskirts of Infinity

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Et in Arcadia ego. Credited as one of the primordial creators of the landscape as an autonomous genre, Nicolas Poussin did two paintings titled after this Latin phrase. Usually translated as “even in Arcadia, there am I,” it implies that even in Utopia, death is present. The paintings, then, depicting a group of men surrounding a tomb in a pastoral scenery, becomes a memento mori, a remembrance of mortality. Still, the sentence—whose subject is never entirely clear—can also suggest, pure and simple, the presence of contrasting thoughts, moods, and desires in the most idyllic settings. It is a reminder that one never walks alone.

The main subject of Maria Calandra’s paintings in her first exhibition with GNYP Gallery is nature, represented in all its sublime power, indifference to the human scale, our considerations, or even safety. After all, these ecological vortexes could consume us with their sound and fury in a heartbeat. However, there is something reassuring to these landscapes, something almost smooth about these earthly elements. Crystalized in the gentle dynamic of the brushstrokes—a controlled and caring movement—Maria Calandra offers a fragment of a perfect system, an environment autonomous in its radiance, beauty, and existence. We are enthralled by a different relationship with the external world, developed after the deference of Poussin, Munch’s commotion, or the Anthropocene emergency. A new symbiosis is at hand.

Our vantage point is almost always very close to the depicted landscape, sometimes to the point of claustrophobia. Still, we are more engulfed than threatened, more invited to be a part of this scenery than expelled from it. Moreover, despite the colorful activities in the middle of some of the canvases, they have no clear boundaries with the outside world. It is as if the paintings continue infinitely.

These landscapes would be representations of Utopia, were they not actual places—these are representations of sites that the painter herself has visited, now brought back in all their intensity. Thus, maybe that’s what Maria Calandra is offering us: the opportunity to travel to Arcadia with her so we can now let ourselves be inspired and moved by these natural outskirts, found both out there, in the world, and in our own minds.

João Gabriel Rizek