Psychedelic Paintings by Rafael Silveira Explore a World of ‘Visual Synonymies’
Flowers for eyes, a horizon for a mouth… a popsicle for a holy relic? Rafael Silveira has long been interested in what he describes as “visual synonymies,” which he likens to “formal correspondences between seemingly unrelated things, moments in which one image unexpectedly recognizes itself in another.” The Brazilian artist’s surreal paintings replace facial features with landforms, flora, and fauna, sometimes hybridizing animals, figures, and other objects.
The works seen here were recently included in the artist’s solo exhibition Popsicledelic Trip at KP Projects Gallery in Los Angeles alongside a show by Silveira’s wife, the artist Flávia Itiberê. A series of vertical pieces with ornate, hand-carved wooden frames resemble the silhouette of popsicles, while figures hold giant versions of the frozen treats in a stylistic nod to religious art during the Renaissance.
The popsicle may seem like a quirky, even out-of-place reference within the context of these works, but for Silveira, the objects represent the broader idea that everything in the universe is connected. No matter how absurd it may seem at first glance—a man with a tree for a head or ice cream cones floating planet-like in a starry sky—the point is that they all really do exist simultaneously. Silveira juxtaposes objects and organisms in unlikely scenarios to challenge how we perceive the world around us and how even the same shape can have completely different associations.
One compositional form in particular, the tavola centinata, describes the shape of a canvas or relief with a squared base and rounded top. A feature commonly found in Gothic and early Renaissance paintings, it has the same silhouette as a classic popsicle. In a statement, Silveira says:
The connection is at once surprising and inevitable. One belongs to the sacred history of painting; the other to the realm of the ephemeral, the popular, the sweet, the melting. Bringing them together creates a bridge between devotional form and unstable matter, between permanence and disappearance, between the spiritual weight of the altarpiece and the fragile delight of something destined to dissolve.
See more of the artist’s work on Instagram.
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