RAQUEL PATER

Photography and paintings have long revealed themselves as a mystery of the gaze, and I dare to suggest that color, when intertwined with any artistic practice, has the power to intensify this enigma. In this selection of artworks—its title a tribute to Eva Heller’s Psychology of Colour, first published in German in 2004—the artist Raquel Pater engages with an expanded understanding of chromatic studies. Here, colors—or their deliberate absence—invite us to perceive the works through their superimpositions, layers, lines—straight or curved—as well as through reliefs and three-dimensional forms, all of which emerge as symbolic expressions of multiple processes. Among paintings and photographs, healing stands as a turning point in the artist’s trajectory, marking the moment when art therapy became an integral part of her practice nearly a decade ago.   This “perpetual discovery,” as Raquel describes the role of color in her work, becomes evident in pieces such as Paixão (2025). It also resonates with reflections found in The Artist’s Reality, a 2007 publication that brought to light previously unknown manuscripts by Mark Rothko, gathering his artistic and philosophical insights on the impact of color as a catalyst for expression. “I am not an abstractionist,” Rothko writes. “I am interested only in expressing basic human emotions: love, tragedy, ecstasy, destruction, and so forth.” Yet the question remains: how might abstract expressionism be approached—and reimagined—within a contemporary context?

RAQUEL PATER (Sao Paulo, Brazil) is an artist who intertwines colors and emotions in a unique journey marked by deep psychological and visual explorations. With a background in Psychology and a master's degree in Clinical Psychology, Raquel channels the complexities of the human mind into her visual creations. Her artistic approach investigates the connections between colors and emotional states. Through photography, sculpture, and painting, she builds a visual narrative that delves into the depths of human emotions.

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