INDIA LEIRE / PEDRO OLIVEIRA: Duo show

Prima is pleased to present a duo show featuring India Leire (b. 1990, UK, based in Paris) and Pedro Oliveira (b. 1990, Portugal, based in Paris), two artists who explore intimacy and transformation through sculpture and painting. India Leire shapes enigmatic sculptures in plaster and ceramic, blending vegetal, mineral, and organic forms into hybrid chimeras. Pedro Oliveira constructs and deconstructs imagery through introspective painting, giving tangible form to memory and emotion.

"Nature is my obsession; it's both the starting point and the ultimate destination of my work […] It has taught me so much about myself and allows me to encounter life in all its diverse forms."

These words by India Leire capture the essence of her art, where natural forms morph into ambiguous sculptures that balance fascination and uncanny strangeness. Drawing inspiration from the dreamlike worlds of Lewis Carroll’s wild gardens, she imagines landscapes reclaimed by nature, reinventing hybrid ecosystems. For Leire, life isn't limited to the organic forms she sculpts; it extends into personal experience and emotion.

Creating after loss. Some works exhibited in the gallery emerged from a profound necessity to give shape to the indescribable and come to terms with grief:

"'Broken' was the first piece I created after my mother passed away. For months, I couldn’t create anything—the pain was overwhelming, making me feel as though my heart was shattered into a thousand pieces. […] This piece marks the beginning of a series exploring the stages of mourning."

Pedro Oliveira, trained in architecture and self-taught in painting, grounds his work in a personal quest for identity and inner reconciliation.

"There are days when my mind gets tangled in a dense fog, wandering through mental landscapes of uncertainty and introspection, sometimes nearing psychosis. During these times, communicating with the outside world feels nearly unbearable. Yet a visceral sexual desire remains, like a pulse of life shining through the mist."

Drawing from memories, dreams, and emotional tensions, Oliveira describes himself as a cartographer of intimacy, mapping a territory that forms an "atlas" of personal iconography. Recurring motifs—mental landscapes, dreams and nightmares, fragmented male bodies, sexual imagery, mouths, and masked portraits—thread through his work, creating a complex, delicately balanced exploration of the subconscious and the personal.

The artist’s commitment is absolute and uncompromising. Indeed, Pedro Oliveira embodies Gerhard Richter’s assertion that, "To paint, one must fully engage oneself intimately."