Sandra Cinto: Prelude to the Sun

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is pleased to announce Prelude to the Sun, a solo exhibition of new work by Sandra Cinto in Los Angeles, on view through July 2, 2025. This will be the artist’s eleventh show with the gallery and second in Los Angeles.

For over three decades, Sandra Cinto has explored the potential of drawing to create intricate images and immersive environments, often using the line as a gesture to deconstruct the physical and conceptual boundaries between painting, sculpture, photography and installation. For Prelude to the Sun, Cinto will create a large-scale, curved wall drawing, enveloping the viewer in a golden sky. The sun is an inspirational element for the artist, not only as a symbol of warmth and life, but also as a reminder of the passage of time. Delicately repeated motifs such as stars, waves, cliffs, bridges, and swings, comprise a rich vocabulary of symbols and lines that construct a lyrical landscape, hovering gently between fantasy and reality. In all her work, especially her installations, Cinto challenges the limits and possibilities of drawing and uses it as a powerful means of connection. The gold walls of the gallery transport the viewer on a journey through the cosmos.

Using tondo and oval-shaped canvases, Cinto explores the cycle of dawn to dusk in a series of new paintings. In a blue and gold palette, the tonal shifts throughout the gallery transition from light to dark, and back again. Reminiscent of airplane windows or portholes, they seem to look over the edge of the earth, flying into the sun. Cinto transforms the gallery spaces into a cosmic vessel from which to witness time itself and invites the viewer on a meditative journey, as if gazing out the window while in flight. Together, the works create a representation of the cosmic energy of the universe and a poetic reflection on the passage of time from yesterday to today to tomorrow.

Since the early 1990s, Cinto has presented her work at museums and institutions worldwide including important solo exhibitions at Fondation Hermès, Tokyo (2020); Instituto Itaú Cultural, Sao Paulo, solo exhibition curated by Paulo Herkenoff (2020); the Dallas Museum of Art (2019-2020); Contemporary Art Center Cincinnati (2017); USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, Florida (2015); the CAAM Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno in Madrid, Spain (2014); Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo (2010); MACUF Museum of Contemporary Art Union Fenosa in La Coruña, Spain (2007); Wall Project at São Paulo Museum of Modern Art (2003); and Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (2003). She will have a solo exhibition at Es Baluard Museu D’Art Contemporani de Palma in Mallorca opening in September 2025.

Among her many public projects and commissions worldwide, her most notable include Prelude to Dream & Melody for the Stars I and II at Teatro Cultura Artística in Sao Paulo (2024); Night of Hope at AT&T Stadium, Dallas Cowboys Art Collection (2024); Let Freedom Ring, 2023, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, DC (2023); The Wishes Boulevard, 2021 Thailand Biennial, curated by Yuko Hasegawa, Korat, Thailand (2021); The Rooftop of the Rosewood Hotel, São Paulo (2021); Water Movement, Itaúsa Bank, Sao Paulo (2020); Open Seascape at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York (2019); Untitled for Murals of La Jolla (2018); The Invisible Telescope at USF Kate Tiedemann College of Business (2018); Library of Love at the Contemporary Art Center Cincinnati (2017); The Great Sun, P.S. 56 (2016); One Day, After the Rain, commissioned by The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. (2012-2013); Encounter of Waters at Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Park Pavilion (2012-2014); A Casa das Fontes (The House of Fountains), an installation conceived for Casa do Sertanista in Sao Paulo (2013); When The Night Comes Into My Room, an outdoor public commission for Obra Viva/Esculturas Públicas (Living Work/Public Sculptures) at Parque Ecológico Municipal Estoril–Virgilio Simionatto in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil (2012); and Japonism, a public commission for the SESC swimming pool in Santo André, Brazil (2011).