Anderson Asteclines (b. 1994, Brazil) is an artist whose paintings are rooted in instinctual and gestural mark-making. They draw on memory, desire and traces of past encounters, reflecting on intimacy and identity. Two subjects dominate: gay cruising experiences in London parks and a complicated childhood with his mother and younger brother in Brazil’s capital. 

Painting with oil on canvas, his layering, smudging, erasing and reworking mirrors the act of remembering, until images materialise like a dream. This negotiation between revealing and concealing reflects the impulse to expose and camouflage at once. 

Distorted faces and symbols of mourning populate his work, exploring anonymity, vulnerability, and longing. His work evokes the absurd, visceral sides of cruising, where pleasure and danger collide, while the works that explore his traumatic relationship with his mother move from the literal to the metaphorical and magical.