Valentina Canseco & Shinji Nagabe: Entre Trópicos
Current exhibition
Overview
193 Gallery is pleased to present Entre Trópicos, an exhibition bringing together Brazilian artists Valentina Canseco and Shinji Nagabe, on the occasion of the Brazilian Season in France.
Entre Trópicos invites us to cross into new sensory territories, immersing us in a space where the body, sensuality, and materiality blend in a delicate dance. The works of Canseco and Nagabe create an intimate, powerful dialogue that resonates with the sounds and rhythms of Brazil, the warmth of its landscapes, and the intensity of its passions. The title Entre Trópicos evokes a place where boundaries disappear, allowing for an embodied experience of the body, the skin, and the light. It’s a space where sensuality is woven into every texture, every vibration of the artwork.
Through different approaches, both artists challenge us to experience the world in new ways. Valentina Canseco, through her abstract experiments with color and light, opens up a visual space where each brushstroke holds the memory of a body in motion. Her large-scale works, painted on synthetic fibers, are not just meant to be viewed—they are meant to be moved through, touched, and lived. Others, more geometric, open like windows onto sensory landscapes, where clouds of colored dots bring to mind the memory of a sunset or the warmth of a summer evening. The viewer is invited into a physical, intimate interaction with the material, as well as a more introspective sensory experience, where color stirs both emotional responses and memories.
Shinji Nagabe, on the other hand, merges Japan and Brazil in a convergence of desires and representations. His autobiographical works are filled with sensuality, yet also rich with complexity. They explore the connections between the body and the imagery of desire, the tension between temptation and the fetishistic gaze placed on others. The fabrics that envelop his photographs act as metaphors for the body, flexible yet strong. Behind layers of fabric, naked, sexualized, and stigmatized bodies emerge, while compositions of fruit and flowers in suggestive forms evoke a gentler sensuality. In other pieces, fragments of bodies dissolve into swirling fabrics, referencing the shunga erotic prints the artist discovered in his childhood, marking his own awakening to sexuality.
Together, these artists transport us Entre Trópicos, into a space where the body, in all its diversity and richness, becomes the key to understanding both the intimate and the universal. It’s an invitation to lose ourselves in a play of textures, colors, and forms, a call to feel, to be present, and to touch what lies beneath the surface. Their work takes us on a poetic journey through sensuality, identity, and the body, urging us to experience the world with greater intensity.
