Estela Sokol: Chuva de prata: texto crítico: Alana Silveira

Silver Rain

Alana Silveira

In the dark of night, moonlight reflects upon the rain casting a silvery gleam on every drop along the journey between sky and earth. This scene of unreal magic and beauty brings an image of something that kindles a light from within, as when we are overtaken by love.

"If there's moonlight in the sky / Lift the veil and make it rain / Over our love." A song immortalized by Gal Costa’s voice, Chuva de prata [Silver Rain] lends its title to the exhibition and site-specific installation developed by Estela Sokol for Galatea Salvador. The music brings love as a luminous and transformative experience, evoking the moment when lunar brightness silvers the rain and everything around seems touched and alight.

Just as the moon is a celestial body devoid of its own light—since it reflects the sun’s gleam illuminating the night—the installation Silver Rain also emanates a luminous energy not generated, but absorbed from ambient light and cast back when darkness falls. The exhibition currently on view brings together a small set of works that dialogue with this site-specific project, resulting from the artist’s investigation into photoluminescence and from the activation of the architecture surrounding her works.

Estela Sokol experiments with both industrial and organic materials, exploring light and color through luminescence and chromatic mutation over time. Navigating between sculpture, expanded painting, and public installations, the artist develops a research practice that employs industrial materials to create works whose coloration shifts under the incidence of luminous energy, using photoluminescent pigments applied to the composition or surface of the pieces.

In her process of investigation into—and experimentation with—the expansion of painting, there is a simultaneous gesture of rupture and approximation with the tradition of modern art history. The reflection on expanding the medium of painting manifests itself both in the handling of industrial materials for the construction of her paintings and sculptures, and in the very materiality of color, sometimes achieved through the overlapping of elements, and at other times through a chromatic transformation of the surfaces. Investigations into photoluminescence and phosphorescence are part of an attempt to create objects in a state of constant pictorial mutation—works that undergo variations through light and over time.

While reinventing traditional signs, Estela aims to bring her works closer to her personal worldview and artistic references. With lightness and humor, she draws parallels between geometry and forms of life—the moon, the sun, animals, food, and many other everyday objects—and establishes dialogues with artists who shape her affective and visual repertoire, such as Volpi, Guignard, Matisse, Paulo Pasta, and Philip Guston. In this movement of approaching, there is an attempt to name the imagery that surrounds her works. The artist draws upon music by titling several works after her musical repertoire, evoking images and atmospheres suggested by the songs. It is within this gesture that Silver Rain—a title that permeates and guides the entire exhibition—finds its place, serving as a metaphor for the magical moment when light touches matter and the world seems to transform, suspended between mystery and enchantment.

The site-specific installation was conceived to activate the “vault” exhibition room but went beyond the strongroom, occupying other gallery spaces. Galatea Salvador is located in the first modernist building on Rua Chile, the oldest street in Brazil, and the space that now houses the gallery was originally the headquarters of a bank. During the renovation, a decision was made to preserve certain elements that hold the memory of the space, with the former vault maintained and repurposed as an exhibition room. This enduring presence of the modern, still resisting within the architecture, echoes through various aspects of Estela Sokol’s work.

Drawing the attention of passersby on the street just before entering the building, a blue neon gas sign announcing Silver Rain can be seen, serving as a foretaste of what will unfold inside the gallery. Neon signs are emblematic inventions of urban modernity that stands as symbols of color and light, elements that permeate the artist’s work. This is the first time Estela materializes a phrase in the shape of a light-text installation, a gesture that reinforces her desire to incorporate verbal language as luminous matter and to invite passersby to step into the exhibition space.

The color of the neon sign overlaps the gradations of blue found in Salvador’s sky and sea, creating a symbolic bridge between the gallery’s exterior and the submerged universe within. To reach the installation, visitors pass through A invenção da maré [The Invention of the Tide], an exhibition by artist Poli Pieratti occupying the gallery’s first room. As one proceeds, their gaze falls upon La isla, a sculpture made of polyester, fiberglass, and quartz, resting on the floor like a shell. Amidst plastics and minerals, something within it seems to shimmer faintly, like a hint of what lies ahead.

Upon entering the vault room, we are drawn into the installation as if stepping inside a shell where a precious pearl is cradled. Glowing like a neon jewel adorning the walls, the vault shelters Silver Rain, an installation made of more than three hundred modular clove-like pieces with subtle variations in size, thickness, and color. The pieces arrange in undulating movements, reminiscent of inverted scales coating the space. Estela observes that the installation’s forms dialogue with Athos Bulcão’s geometry, evoking elements of modernist architecture while tracing a direct dialogue with the space that embraces it.

The cloves have a white outer surface and an inner face coated with photoluminescent pigments predominantly in blue and yellow, which are more intense and longer-lasting hues. In the naturally dark environment of the vault, the inner faces of the pieces light up, casting a vivid glow that reverberates across the white walls and surfaces. The photoluminescent modules absorb light throughout the night and the installation stays aglow to gather luminous energy, reinventing moonlight itself. Each clove then becomes a drop of this silver rain, absorbing and reflecting light back into the space. A residual glow is emitted during the day, drawn from what was absorbed.

The more light the installation receives, the more intensely it shines. Inside the vault, Silver Rain is cradled like a jewel, a secret for kindling with growing intensity the radiance born from the meeting of light and matter, the same light of love that, as Gal sings, ignites every part of us.

ALANA SILVEIRA is a cultural producer, curator, and director of Galatea Salvador.