Text

"An der Oberfläche" can evoke the idea of a space that exists both above and below the boundary represented by the surface. The surface is conceived as a threshold—the limit between things, between the elements that make up our world. In this sense, the title of the exhibition suggests a depth we rarely associate with the surface itself, often seen as a liminal element that reveals only what is visible and immediate. But for Linda Carrara, painting is not just surface: it is density, it is thickness.

The works on display explore precisely this boundary between things—the depth hidden beneath appearances and the paint that settles on the real, transforming into an image that nearly touches abstraction. The compositions on view are landscapes created through contact and tension, unfolding at the threshold between elements. The negative and the positive intertwine, creating an adherence of surfaces that mold and adapt to one another, just as water conforms to the shape of the objects that contain it. Likewise, the sky, the field, the very matter: every substance of nature takes on the form that the other grants it. Painting, in the same way, adapts to this constant becoming.

Between frottage techniques that "steal" the shape of reality, skies that emerge from varying shades of black, and landscapes that double across the canvas, Linda Carrara's work takes us to the very heart of nature. We dig into its structure, penetrating the depth of a vision of landscape that we usually take for granted, simply because the eye sees only what lies on the surface.

For years, Linda Carrara has devoted her work to still life, engaging in deep research on both a material and technical level. Painting, for her, is an act of synthesis—a visual treatise on her own pictorial gesture. Her practice arises from a reflection on the conceptual and mimetic dynamics of painting, questioning its representational aims in favor of expressive freedom that creates new realities and worlds, built upon unprecedented visual relationships. In her work, subject and composition—central to figurative practice—serve as a pretext, an opportunity to construct an imaginative reality, suspended and freed from convention.