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Matteo Bergamini | Atmospheric Forecasts, 2026

Fragments, clippings of the world; postcards from lands whose geographies sit uncertainly on the map: the latest production by painter Guilherme Almeida (Salvador, 2000) moves away from the figuration, rhythms, and explicit Bahian references investigated in recent years, now embracing an analytical research of the construction of nature—or rather, of its representation.

The works composing this pictorial set presented by the artist at Galeria Base can be observed either individually—each vision speaking for itself—or as a single landscape that, in turn, transcends borders, biomes, cultures, and horizons, even though Bahia itself—the land of Guilherme’s affections and memory—continues to inspire him once again in his peregrinations around the mystery of painting.

In 2024, during an interview in his studio, he told me: "I don't paint, I clean the brush: my method is to get rid of the paint stuck in it." I was surprised. Not so much by the idea, but by the manifestation of the gesture itself: observing him, one could clearly see the painting material almost wedging into the canvas, sculpting it in an unusual, rounded way. It reminded me of 19th-century Pointillism, that movement that emerged almost as an epigone of Impressionism, incorporated into a vein that today we might even define as "pop" or "popular," since it has become the most common technique for children to learn the basics of art.

However, there is something dark in these marks traced by Guilherme Almeida, reminiscent more of Van Gogh than the optical mixtures of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Perhaps—certainly, in fact—due to a matter of landscape: no "Circus" or "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," but the thick forest on the edge of the Atlantic; mysterious details of the richest, most threatened, and most disregarded forest on the planet. In Guilherme’s production, his life is revealed in the face of the world: hidden in the shadows or bleached by the sun, guarding its encantados (enchanted spirits) and its chamaleonic identity, presenting itself according to those particles of light that once captivated the senses of the Impressionists.

Guilherme Almeida names them without fear: Turner, Monet, and Magritte are his triad of reference for rewriting the sensation of nature. He involves them fearlessly to investigate forms of representation that subvert all stereotypes surrounding the academic rules of "good painting." Indeed, our artist now grants himself the luxury of re-exploring the perception of the natural world toward icons of the impressionistic, the surreal, and the abstract: he reshapes canons that are still loose, delivering an imagery that reveres art history while updating it into a carnal and even fierce form of painting, whose best description would come from the voracious impressionist brushstroke that Almeida revives.

The "Silêncio da Mata" (Silence of the Forest) series enters the most sublime imagery of nature in relation to the human gaze: it abandons common ideas regarding the subject, for in the homage the painter offers to the Realm of Oxóssi lives the simultaneity that only exists in memories—often revealed by cinema or music in a much more exquisite way than that achieved by the visual arts. "When I started these works, I remembered my childhood, going to the beach, diving for long periods, trips to my uncle’s farm, and getting lost among the trees. The great silence that existed in those moments interested me," the artist explains.

Outside of standard patterns, these dark and brilliant "frames" evoke leaves reddened by the colors of the sunset or a nature in trance being altered by the clarity of the day; in these visions, the tones of classical representation are surpassed, even while continuing with the oldest of art's mediums: paint and brush. Yet, was it not Magritte himself who revolutionized the idea of visual semantics using the most conventional—one could even say banal—forms of figuration?

In these small-format canvases, most of which refer to a climatic condition or an ambient temperature, one circulates on the axis of dreams, premonitions, and—as if in a paradox—the forest becomes alive beyond the idea itself: checkmate against Plato, whose philosophy relegated the mimesis of art to the world of deception, while only thoughts would live in purity.

"This transition between abstraction and figuration is a place I have been seeking a lot. Lately, I have questioned myself deeply about the issue of the stain and the texture. My gaze ended up pulling heavily toward this place until human figuration disappeared..." reports Guilherme, who has been working on this set—presented here—in recent months, seeking a vision that embraces that mystery of life that has always surrounded his production.

As already noted, the artist’s Bahia is still the observation point of a quiet but unfiltered nature, witnessed by surreal encounters: in the tones of dawn or pitch black; in the glow or absence of colors. In some of these paintings, the vibrations of gray reach the mystical dimension of contemplation, of metamorphosis: physical phenomena enter the dispute of elements and manage to amplify a gaze that becomes an inner reflection.

Thus, in these paintings, inversions of perspective or eccentric characters appear: giant herons on the horizon line, a fishing line transforming the entire scene into abstract painting, rain wetting in "italics," raining palm trees, a sea bass out of the sea—perhaps learning to fly in an extreme act of ancestral metamorphosis?—eucalyptus plantations in the Recôncavo, the island of Itaparica as a threshold, and a boat floating in the sky. Could it be, or perhaps it is floating on the water as it absorbs the color of the air itself, in the most metaphysical moments gifted to us by the sunset in the All Saints Bay?

Finally, the palette: in this collection of landscapes, it belongs to the areas of reflection. Far from a planet in flames, Guilherme Almeida’s explorations lead us to a crystallized moment where we must recognize ourselves: us before the environment, it before us, rehearsing its most intimate, most voluptuous form. And the titles, synthesizing what we behold in amazement: the definitive declaration that yes, the mystery remains intact even while reluctantly honoring and taking advantage of the most powerful pursuits of the avant-garde, in a renewed tropical richness.