Once again, Espace L  brings a fragment of Brazilian creative culture to down-town Geneva. The gallery’s new exhibition “Alentours” (Surroundings) opens this weekend. It’s worth checking out. The main act is the work of Niura Bellavinha. I meet her fresh from the airport. What she has brought with her awaits hanging; she takes me on a tour.

An explanation of the technique behind her trademark, almost tartan-like, canvases gets lost in our Portufranglais translation. What I gather is that bold red paint running over delicate muted blue rectangles is achieved in part by infiltration of a heavy liquid layer of paint applied to the reverse of the canvas and allowed to permeate through. The technique is as intriguing as Niura herself; she tells me that this represents her personal surroundings.

She becomes animated when she discusses her destructively mined home state of Minas Gerais. The rich red-brown pigment in the canvases representing her environmental surroundings is back-yard dust. She tells me of the importance of using the oldest and most basic pigments possible; the now familiar understated mineral blue is zirconium extracted from meteorites (Wow!)

The most intriguing (and the most difficult to photograph!) is a combined work representing Niura’s cosmic surroundings. Photographs of constellations taken by the Hubble telescope are juxtaposed with beautiful little dark canvases painted with ground meteorite. They glitter infinitely.

Niura is intense, other-worldly and mystical. She hands me a sumptuous book of her complete works that makes manifest her extensive career, imagination and talent. Espace L has done well to capture some fragments of her surroundings. Meeting her is a unique experience and, if I am honest, I leave the gallery a little bit in love with such an unchained spirit.