ANNA PAOLA PROTASIO: TRAWL, Opens 11/18 at Nohra Haime Gallery

Trawl, an exhibition by the Brazilian artist Anna Paola Protasio, will be on view at the Nohra Haime Gallery from November 18, 2013 to January 11, 2014.

Protasio recently entered the world of fine art after working as an architect for 20 years. Carrying over skills of precision and exactness, she produces constructive art through varying languages of installation and sculpture. She creates a world nourished by mythology, sensibility and poetry where concepts such as the unattainable, the eternal and the subtleties of human existence are recurring themes.

Her work utilizes elements such as light, water, sound and metal to meld and enforce the concepts they embody. One example is Transe, 2013, in which a maquette lighthouse blends music with light. Representing an essential maritime structure to bring in the lost, the glow of Transe instead reaches out to the divine, embodied by Yemanja, the Brazilian deity of beauty and love, motherhood and the ocean.

Concepts of the unattainable and eternal can be seen in the installation Horizon, 2013, where a plastic boat is suspended aboveground. Sailing toward a clear-cut horizon drawn on the wall with a laser-level, this humanistically simple act is quickly overturned. The boat remains fixed in time and the horizon becomes an unattainable goal never to be reached. Similar in theory is Eternal Thirst, 2012, an installation depicting a water tap enclosed in a glass box. Just outside the box sits an empty drinking glass that will remain void of water for all eternity.

The series Fragments, 2013, introduces the allegory of the origin of art through the myth of Narcissus. It is an installation made of aluminum and brass sheets adorned with automotive paint. Illuminated by the sun and moon, she illustrates icebergs just before they melt. With their reflections stuck in time, they remain forever immortalized in that beautiful moment the very same way the Greek god was captured by his own reflection.

Protasio's art responds to the human experience in all its complexity, exposing the viewer to the subtleties and small sensibilities and insensibilities of the world.

MARKING TIME, 2013, white marble and brass, ed. 3, 51 1/8 (diam) x 31 1/2 in. 130 (diam) x 80 cm.