A studio is generally regarded as a place of confinement, but the true artist knows how to alter the configuration of that space, how to reimagine its architecture. And so, before Paulo Pasta decided to title this exhibition A Journey Around My Room, he realized that the striking resemblance between the space that now hosts this show and his own studio was more than mere coincidence. It spoke, in fact, of a relationship between body and architecture that transcended formal considerations, assuming a phenomenological dimension. 

The architecture of the studio, as a theme in the works presented here, has indeed guided the very structure of these paintings. And to confirm that it was not only this exhibition shaped by the architectural experience of his studio, Pasta invited his current assistant, Renato Rios, along with four other painters who have held the same position in the past, to share their impressions. They are Alexandre Wagner, Bruno Baptistelli, Lucas Arruda, and Rodrigo Bivar. 

It bears mentioning that the title of the exhibition alludes to the eponymous book published in 1794 by Count Xavier de Maistre (1763-1852). Also a painter — of landscapes —, Maistre recounts in it an inner journey within the room where he was confined for forty-two days in Turin, punished for taking part in a duel with a Piedmontese officer. Imprisoned, he ultimately finds freedom through an imaginary reconstruction of the room’s architecture, wandering its perimeter in zigzags and circles. 

The difference is that Paulo Pasta has never felt imprisoned in his studio. On the contrary, it is a space of absolute freedom, where the painter travels through time and translates that existential experience onto canvas — much like the astronaut in 2001: A Space Odyssey, who, as Kubrick suggests in the film’s epilogue, may never have made an interplanetary journey at all. The director intimates that the astral voyage was nothing but an inner odyssey around the character’s own room. 

In at least two chapters of his book, Xavier de Maistre reflects on how painting enables us to conquer space through the same mystical experience that so haunted Borges, Vila-Matas, and other writers. Paulo Pasta, himself an attentive reader, was likewise seduced by that mystery.