Deborah Engel

Palo Alto, 1977. Lives in Rio de Janeiro

Observing the architectonic phenomena that permeate our experience of the city is a staple of Deborah Engel’s work. Collaging photographs printed in various scales and applied in varying thicknesses, the artist creates three-dimensionality and illusionism in order to discuss the nature of space, as much in poetic as in conceptual terms.

At Frestas, Engel presents works that play with relief, scale and composition. The pieces are large and give the viewer the impression of standing before different architectonic spaces, with passages, anterooms and circulations trailing into the distance as the works jut seductively into the exhibition space. Consisting of various copies of the same image layered one upon the other, the collages suggest movement and potentize the duality between finitude and infinity.