CONVERGENT LINES: Jojo Corväiá, Mariana Oushiro, Marius Ritiu, Maarten Vrolijk

L’Appartement Gallery is pleased to announce Convergent Lines, a group exhibition that brings together the expressive canvases of painter Mariana Oushiro in dynamic conversation with the work of artists and designers Jojo Corväiá, Marius Ritiu and Maarten Vrolijk. Spanning the gallery’s three distinct rooms, the exhibition traces the intersections between fine art, sculpture and design through a shared reverence for materiality, process, and architectural influence. Each artist engages deeply with organic forms and natural materials—whether through hand-molded ceramics, sculptural metalwork, fluid vessels, or layered brushwork—foregrounding the tactile and the elemental.

 

In the first room, Marius Ritiu (b. 1984, Romania – based in Antwerp, Belgium) presents monumental sculptures and functional furniture that assert mass and presence, grounding the space with their architectural scale and texture. The second room shifts to the intimate and tactile, where Jojo Corväiá (b. 1970, Venezuela – based in Berlin) exhibits ceramics that sit like meditative relics atop plinths, bearing the trace of the hand in their raw, earthen surfaces. In the third room, a contemplative study, Maarten Vrolijk (b. 1966, Netherlands – based in Amsterdam, Netherlands) offers delicate lamps and vessels that blur the line between sculpture and utility, each object inviting close inspection. Throughout the gallery, Mariana Oushiro (b. 1992, Brazil – based in New York) creates a counterpoint with her paintings—floating on the walls, gestural and geometric, introducing a sense of movement, emotion, and spatial rhythm.

 

Mariana Oushiro’s practice is rooted in a dialogue between control and spontaneity. Her paintings often begin with precise architectural lines and geometric structures, which are gradually layered with fluid gestures, organic forms, and luminous color fields. This tension between order and freedom evokes a kind of visual choreography—lines converge, shapes dissolve, and space becomes elastic. Working directly on the canvas with her hands, knees, and feet, Oushiro uses her entire body as a tool, allowing physical movement to shape the image. This performative process infuses the work with a visceral rhythm, reinforcing the sense that each composition is not only painted but danced into being. Deeply influenced by natural elements and architectural rhythm, Oushiro's work explores the permeability of boundaries, both formal and emotional. In Convergent Lines, her canvases act as connective tissue between the static, grounded forms of the objects and sculptures and the unseen energies that animate them.

 

Convergent Lines invites viewers into a choreography of contrasts: between weight and lightness, permanence and motion, structure and spontaneity. While the sculptural and design works stand still, rooted in gravity and form, Oushiro’s paintings appear to dance—colliding and recombining, suggesting flux and transformation. At its core, the exhibition explores how divergent practices can converge through a shared language of material exploration, and how architecture, in its many guises, informs and inspires the creative act.