Marina Rheingantz’s Míope: Weathered Surfaces and Chromatic Dissolution
White Cube Seoul presents the Brazilian artist's contemplative landscapes, where painterly process becomes as compelling as the image itself. Layering, removal and the agency of materials create works of profound atmospheric depth.
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Marina Rheingantz’s exhibition at White Cube Seoul unfolds as a meditation on the relationship between image and material, between the artist’s intentional gesture and the inherent agency of paint itself. Míope, which translates as ‘myopic’ or ‘short sighted’, presents a series of landscapes in which traditional pictorial depth retreats, dissolving into something far more immediate and sensory: the insistent presence of the painted surface.
These works possess a particular textural richness that emerges through Rheingantz’s deeply considered process. The smaller scale canvases especially reveal the complexity of her approach, where surfaces have been weathered by time and labour, bearing the visible traces of staining, oil stick applications and deposits of impasto that accumulate like sediment. Each canvas reads as both artwork and archaeological object, palimpsest and present moment compressed into a single shimmering plane.
What distinguishes Rheingantz’s practice is her willingness to surrender partial control to her materials. Her methodology moves fluidly between layering and removal; she employs turpentine to dilute pigment, allowing colours to bleed and descend the canvas in rivulets and runs. This ceding of agency to the fluid properties of paint creates an extraordinary dialogue between intention and accident, between the artist’s hand and the autonomous behaviour of matter itself. The resulting works possess an almost musical quality, as though the pigments themselves were conducting a subtle symphony across the canvas surface.
The exhibition title carries particular resonance within this context. Míope suggests a vision that cannot perceive depth, that sees only what lies immediately before it. Yet within Rheingantz’s painterly language, this ‘short sightedness’ becomes a profound strength, forcing the viewer into an intimate engagement with surface, texture, colour and the accumulated evidence of process. There is no escape into illusionistic distance; instead, we are held within the present moment, confronted with the magnificent materiality of paint.
The chromatic palette favours contemplative restraint, with weathered ochres, muted blues and subtle gradations of grey creating a sense of quiet contemplation. Light moves across these surfaces not as an illusion created by perspective but as a physical phenomenon reflecting off accumulated layers of paint, creating subtle shifts in tone and apparent temperature that invite extended looking.
Míope remains on view at White Cube Seoul until 24 October 2026, offering an extended opportunity to experience these remarkable paintings in the gallery’s serene architectural setting.
Imagery courtesy of White Cube (@whitecube).
