Untitled (praia 12) | from the series De areia

"In 1998, while I was still a student, I embarked on an attempt to create a series of illustrations for Duino Elegies, by Rainer Maria Rilke. I made several drawings that were partly inspired by these elegies, and I edited them together like a movie. The process was lengthy and left unfinished. 

Years passed before I re-encountered, in my city’s landscape, features that could relate to those themes once again. I view this series, initiated in 2011, as the outcome of this decade-plus long investigation. 

As in all my work, the research started from everyday objects, situations and events. Living in Rio, the beach has become a kind of room in my domestic space, and the peaceful, steady flow of people walking on the sand is like a metronome. 

The presence of this uninterrupted sight ended up breaking through the boundaries of my intimate space, and it has become as inseparable from my perception of worldly things as the furniture and objects in a house. With their omnipresence, they look back at us, merging with our deepest issues. These objects become the agents that entice me to work with my own concerns. 

I see Untitled (praia 12) and all of the pieces in the de areia series as drawings. A simplification and a synthesis of the narrative I was seeking as a response to Rilke’s elegies. Drawing as an agent to a rapid, spontaneous flow of ideas, closer to writing. 

I use oil paint on wood, but I do not consider issues inherent to painting. I usually think in a narrative way, but I do not preoccupy myself with facts. The characters that cross this landscape are perceived as too far away for the facts to be unveiled. These pictures of the beach compose fragments of an affective narrative that attempts to grasp the entropic process of our relationship with what surrounds us."

Maria Klabin in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (October 2013)