Deni Lantz

Deni Lantz is a Brazilian artist who lives and works in São Paulo. His work primarily revolves around painting, in various formats and mediums. At first glance, his paintings evoke atmospheric colors and a special attention to the "facture" (making process), as well as the particularities and possibilities of the surface through painting. Gradually, the artist's subjects, references, and objectives begin to emerge. His work often explores themes of nature and its processes, such as fertilization, seeds, roots, the micro and macrocosmos, oracular games, and the relationship with music, rhythms, and Brazil's popular and vernacular culture.

He spent two months in an artistic residency in New York (Residency Unlimited) from May to June, and now the artist is back in his studio in Brazil, reflecting on this experience and its developments and impressions.

When I arrived in New York at the end of April, I quickly felt the need to create a kind of “home” around me, through my habits, objects, and the small choices I made. After spending over two years learning to be a father—my first child was born in 2022 and is now 2 years old—I found myself alone, far from home, and completely immersed in my work. Being away from my family, from the home we nest in, and from the daily routine was incredibly challenging from the start. Because of this, I felt the desire to gradually build, in my new studio, in my work, and even within myself, a slower, more personal time, an atmosphere of calm and concentration, a setting conducive to processing this experience of solitude, distance, and novelty.

In the paintings, this manifested through layers and layers of paint, scrapings, and pentimenti; countless hours of painting, driven by a desire to evoke a strange yet comforting light, crafted with a touch of affection and oddness. I wanted people to connect with the paintings on an emotional level, for the paintings to offer a sense of calm, flavor, and silence.

This desire was constantly in friction with a city as crazy, intense, and diverse as New York, with its multitude of universes and cultures, and its fast-paced, sometimes even aggressive, rhythm. However, I didn’t see this friction as something negative. On the contrary, I began to understand throughout the residency that the clash between these different timings, desires, and expectations could generate something interesting. I spent countless hours in the studio, as a gesture of protection and deep immersion, but when I engaged with the city, I noticed that these experiences reverberated in the work in unexpected ways; returning to the studio every day and exploring the tension between city life and studio practice was incredibly powerful.

I never have a defined project for my paintings. They start from a memory or a desire for a certain color and atmosphere, from the urge to create a specific surface, from a “method” of beginning, or from a form that I see and imagine—whether in my own work or in that of other artists. There are many ways to begin and countless possible paths, but everything truly happens when I start painting. Gradually, each painting finds its own direction, and the light and fresh start of a work often needs to be lost, challenged, or abandoned. There’s also a friction between what I imagined and what actually comes to be; subjects and themes often change, and they’re not the center of the work but rather orbit around it like ghosts, echoes, memories, or visions of the past or future. Frequently, the perception of a painting’s subject is somewhat open, and what the painting is about—its theme or reference—is inherently tied to how it was made, its materiality; there’s an indistinction between “what” and “how.”

Along with the new subjects that emerged during the residency, I also discovered other ways of constructing the surface, deepening my long-held desires to experiment, research, and take risks. These organic shapes that resemble fruits—circular, oval, and slightly irregular—had already started appearing in my work in São Paulo, but in New York, I became increasingly interested in their relationship with the small “dots”—tiny marks that appear in almost all the pieces and that I’ve sometimes referred to as “seeds.” This relationship began to point me toward ideas of fertility, planting, and living systems.

From a very young age, I was constantly walking along trails and exploring caves in the Southwest region of Brazil with my mother, deep in the Atlantic Forest. She, a public agent and environmental conservation advocate, worked at a state park managed by the Forest Foundation of São Paulo State, where many kilometers of native forest are preserved (Intervales State Park, Ribeirão Grande – SP). My family and I were always there. Although my mother no longer works at the park, we still visit occasionally to this day.

My father, a veterinarian, also introduced me to animals from an early age—dogs, cats, their various breeds, their playfulness, surgeries, and anatomy. I spent a lot of time in his clinic, observing his care for the animals and their owners. The relationship with nature—fauna, flora, behavior, culture—has always been a subject of direct experience for me. I believe this deeply influenced me, in a way that is both spiritual and aesthetic. I hold a deep reverence for these memories and am convinced that our natural environment is a sanctuary and a significant source of the poetic elements I strive to infuse into my work. Even so, it’s always been—and still is—challenging for me to connect my artistic practice with the deep desire to explore and immerse myself in this theme. I want my work to also embody displacement, curiosity, doubt, vulnerability, nonsense, and illogic.

At the end of 2022, I began using some seeds as a kind of dice, runes, or búzios—a divinatory ritual/practice in the Candomblé tradition where initiated Spiritual leaders cast cowrie shells on a prepared table to answer questions related to personal or religious matters. I would cast the seeds onto blank canvases, marking their almost random positions, and the paintings would begin from these marks.

I started this practice after returning from a búzios reading and realizing that there is a relationship between chance and precision in oracular games: a stone or shell cast by chance provides more or less precise answers, suggests a way of seeing, reveals something previously unseen. From this exploration, more rounded forms began to emerge, echoing the table where búzios are cast—a space that concentrates a process, a closed circular body that also resembled microscopic images of cells, stellar bodies, as well as fruits, seeds, and leaves.

In New York, I created a few pieces using this “method” of throwing seeds, but the oval shapes that resembled fruits were directly related to the theme of seeds and could still suggest more compositions and possibilities within the subjects and methods of creating. I completed some works that associated the positions of the marks—“seeds”—with musical rhythms and claves of instruments, such as the tamborim—a percussion instrument used in Samba. This allowed me to connect the practice of painting to my musical practice.

With the exception of a few pieces, most of my work features these marks, dots, and small gestures. I refer to them as seeds, but I also like to say that they tension the space, much like a body in a net, a sound in silence, or an accent in a word. I like to think of them as the seeds of a painting’s ecosystem, each with its own nature and natural laws. The layers of paint that create atmospheres are also part of this same nature, a soil for the seeds. In this way, they may allude to the “natural world,” but they possess autonomy and their own reality.

An interesting development was being able to title all the works at the very last moment of the residency, while cataloging and packing them. In a quick and somewhat unpretentious gesture, I associated the works with memories of the city, places, objects, and reflections. I titled some pieces in Spanish, understanding that New York is a nearly bilingual city, which reflects a lot about its social and political structure. As a foreigner, I could see that, in part, it is a city inhabited, built, and sustained by us, the “foreigners.” I wanted, as a Brazilian, to incorporate culture, language, and speech into my practice, even if this was through painting or titles like “Blanquito,” “Má Suerte,” “Sueño,” and “Solito.” I chose not to translate the titles, giving each a unique name and also seeking to create interest in the sound of each word.

I have been represented by Galeria Estação since 2022, when I had my first solo exhibition titled Deni Lantz: Pinturas, curated and written by Ivo Mesquita. Even before being represented by the gallery, I frequented their exhibitions and admired the artists they represented, and all the work of Vilma Eid with Brazilian art. Her work is of immense importance in Brazil and the world. For me, it is very significant to be close to the works of artists like Véio, Madalena dos Santos Reinbolt, Neves Torres, José Antonio da Silva, among many others. For me, as a reference, they are of the same importance as established global North artists. Vilma’s work has been increasingly pointing in recent years toward bridging the gap between Brazilian “popular” art and contemporary Brazilian and international production.

During the residency, I reflected a lot on the relationship between my references and deeper cultural roots as a Brazilian and the experience of being in contact with New York City, its complex culture and reality, connecting with the gallery’s work and its purposes, and I understood the weight of our Brazilian production even more intensely. It was thanks to the constant support of Galeria Estação and its team that I was able to have this rich and transformative experience.

You can find out more about Deni at: @deni.lantz__ // galeriaestacao.com.br/en/artist/102/deni-lantz

Photos: Camilla Loreta