With immersive design, sensory depth, and a chromatic sweep of new works, ‘Tuning Fork’ transforms Instituto Tomie Ohtake into a site of visual resonance.
Marina Perez Simão, Sem título, 2024. Oil on linen, 200 x 246cm. Photo: Guilherme Gomes
From August 15 to October 19, 2025, Instituto Tomie Ohtake presents ‘Marina Perez Simão – Tuning Fork’, the artist’s first major institutional exhibition in Brazil. Curated by Paulo Miyada, the exhibition occupies the institution’s most extensive gallery, which has been architecturally altered to echo the fluid, atmospheric sensibility of Simão’s paintings. The title refers to the tuning fork—an instrument for calibrating harmony—and in this context, it becomes a metaphor for perception itself: vision as vibration, and painting as resonance.
A celebrated colourist known for her synesthetic approach to painting, Simão explores the boundaries between inner landscape and material form. Featuring around 80 works—oil paintings, watercolours, and sketchbooks—the exhibition immerses viewers in vivid fields of colour and light. At the heart of Simão’s practice lies a rigorous process of experimentation, wherein watercolours function as visual rehearsals for her monumental canvases. These preliminary studies are not simply preparatory, but integral to her conceptual and chromatic exploration.
Fittingly, the exhibition design invites audiences into a gradual unfolding of the artist’s visual language. The gallery’s signature curved wall has been extended, subtly shifting spatial perception. The journey traces fifteen years of Simão’s production, culminating in a new body of large-scale oil paintings created between 2024 and 2025. These works envelop the viewer in continuous chromatic undulations, where layered gestures and modulated tones suggest both structure and spontaneity.
Curator Paulo Miyada writes: “Each color, chosen and prepared before touching the canvas, defines a field, a wave, an organ of the painting, which juxtaposes or overlaps other fields, resonating in unison without dissolving or merging… In this way, a painting takes form – not just as an image, but as a material presence that reflects light intensely, stimulating the senses.”
‘Tuning Fork’ joins a lineage of landmark exhibitions at Instituto Tomie Ohtake that centre the inventive power of women artists—including Anna Maria Maiolino, Vânia Mignone, Iole de Freitas, Maria Lira Marques, Mira Schendel, and Patricia Leite. In this latest iteration, Simão’s work offers a sensory encounter with colour and space that transcends medium, inviting viewers to tune in to frequencies both visual and emotional.
For more information, please visit Instituto Tomie Ohtake.
