UPCOMING SERIES - 2026

S.O.S. SERIES


Unstable material structure, sensitive ecology, Massambaba, and oceanic systems under pressure

S.O.S. Oceans shifts pictorial edification toward an ontological and territorial scale. The series emerges from the contact between mineral matter, coastal memory, and ecological crisis, with the Massambaba restinga, an environmental preservation area (Arraial do Cabo - Rio de Janeiro coastline) where the studio is located, acting as a living territory of resonance. Mortar, oils, alkyd resin, sedimentary quartz sand, mineral pigments, epoxy foam, industrial materials, and marks of corrosion compose surfaces where the ocean does not appear as landscape, but as a sensitive system under the pressure of collapse.
In these works, flow, salinity, erosion, pollution, and sedimentation become internal conditions of painting. Marine matter is reconfigured as a field of instability: it accumulates, inflames, preserves, oxidizes, yields, and resists. The surface does not describe ecological collapse; it sustains it as a physical presence, inscribing a layer of human sensitivity into raw matter.
The series expands Ovatsug Figueiredo's research by connecting environmental vulnerability, territorial memory, and material behavior. Rather than representing nature as a landscape external to the work, S.O.S. Oceans explores chromatic saturation through processes of sedimentation and excavation, reinscribing matter as an active force capable of altering painting and tensioning the very idea of permanence.