Jonathas de Andrade explores Brazil’s maritime communities in his solo exhibition

Galleria Continua presents Ivresse d’une vie de bains de mer, a solo exhibition by Brazilian artist Jonathas de Andrade, on view from June 12 – September 19, 2026, at their Paris Marais space. The art exhibition brings together film, photography, installation, silkscreen and, for the first time within an exhibition, poetry by the artist. “Presenting recent and newly produced work, de Andrade first developed this body of work through a commission from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where it was presented in November 2025 within the Photography Department,” Galleria Continua mentions in the show's press release.

The exhibition’s title, Ivresse d’une vie de bains de mer, is drawn from one of the artist’s poems that “evokes the intense and immersive atmosphere of canoeist communities, where sailing becomes a perceptual condition, imbued with a hypnotic sense and shaped by heat, sunlight and the movement of the waves”, the art gallery explains. The legacy of Brazilian Neoconcretism is a defining reference throughout the showcase.

At the show's centre is de Andrade’s engagement with the communities of sailors and fishermen of his native northeastern Brazil, particularly the jangadeiros along the coast of Maceió, his hometown and the canoeiros of the São Francisco River in Alagoas, where he lives and works. The contemporary artist presents Jangadeiros e Canoeiros (2025), a film that moves between documentary and fiction. Bringing together two distinct yet interconnected maritime contexts, the work follows the daily lives of both communities.

“Through an interview, canoeists articulate the chromatic and symbolic codes that inform the painting of their boats. Colours drawn from the natural environment carry cultural, emotional and traditional meanings, ranging from the greens and blues of water and sea to deeper reds associated with mortality. The film captures recurring gestures, sun-exposed bodies, moments of physical intensity and collective experiences during regattas,” Continua explains.

The multidisciplinary artist also collected hand-painted sails bearing local advertising and commercial imagery, which are reclaimed and reframed in the Jangadeiro Sails series. “Mounted on a special stretcher, the reading of the advertising message is partially broken apart, leaving behind a more abstract pictorial information…The resulting sculptural presence situates the works at the intersection of photography, painting and sculpture, forming layered compositions in which image, meaning and memory converge,” the contemporary art gallery notes in the project's description.

In his diptychs from Permanent lightning strike, black-and-white photographic images are printed directly onto sucupira wood panels. Another series, Neoconcrete Canoeists, features black-and-white silkscreen photographs set against vivid chromatic fields, creating sailing scenes.

“Jonathas de Andrade extends these explorations of form and perception through a practice attentive to the temporal, sensory and social dimensions of experience. Abstraction thus becomes a space of encounter, where meaning emerges through the interplay of image, gesture and viewer,” Galleria Continua states.