Adriana Proganó
I kissed the snake hello

3+1 Arte Contemporânea is pleased to present I kissed the snake hello, the first solo exhibition by Adriana Proganó (Lucerne, 1992) at the gallery.

Adriana Proganó’s work is based on her own imaginary, in which the gesture of painting is an impetus, not only spontaneous, but necessary. Paintings with vibrant colours and fearless, unrestrained brushstrokes are testimony to what occupies the artist’s mind at that moment. The body and the weight of social norms are frequent themes in her works, never forgetting genuineness and humour, in a will to create that cannot be contained.

In I kissed the snake hello, Proganó presents a new series of paintings on canvas that speak not so much of the relationship between humans and nature, but of something more important: their union. Human beings breathe the air of the trees, but the trees also breathe the air of humans. This symbiotic relationship that involves all living beings is something the artist is interested in exploring now, representing moments when this connection happens.

The characters that inhabit these paintings are those already characteristic to Proganó: with ambiguous bodies that defy notions of gender and that, although clearly human, take on almost mystical forms, as if part of a mythology devised by the artist herself. The difference this time are the intensions of these figures: if in previous works they had almost always been on the attack – destroying, interrupting and giving wings to their whims –, now they have a protective position, strengthening their bond with nature.