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The painting series dedicated to Pluto origins from the idea that the most significant knowledge of the planet is quite recent: its observation by NASA New Horizons dates back to 2015. According to the most recent observations, the planet's surface is iridescent, with a range of chromatic variations including black and white, considered the most significant chromatic diversity in the Solar System. The mysterious Pluto's aspect origins a series of explorative paintings, where the paper surface becomes an imaginative tool to describe the planet, aiming at revealing its several chromatic identities. The idea is to create a connection with the symbolic and morphological aspects of the planet: painting becomes a tool for an explorative process. The colours are made by using the pigments collected by the artist herself over time, which allow to create a balance between the chromatic results and the light refraction. An experimental technique developed by the artist's deep research allows the pigments to reverberate as much as possible, leaving the colour in its purest essence, according to the antique painting teaching.

The most recent artworks refer to chromatic landscapes, which becomes more and more intense, the colours are bright and spark or obscure, thanks to a continous, infinite and experimental painting process.

Laura Santamaria (1976) is an artist living and working in Milan (Italy) and Lugano (Switzerland). 

Her practice, which includes painting, installations, site specific projects, is related to precarious states of impermanency through which she explores varied experimental creative processes. Her site-specific sculptures and installations often present to the viewer a parallelism between the micro and macro cosmos thus reflecting on systems and processes of interconnectivity.
Her work is represented in collections including the Artphilein Foundation Collection (Switzerland) and in a permanent installation at Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte (Italy). Her previous residencies include also Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, A Coruña, Spain (2017) and V-I-R ViaFarini in residence, Milan (2018).
Laura Santamaria is founder and curator of the collaborative project "Drawings from Lightning", an artist book made of a collection of drawings representing a statement of the artists’ thinking, an expression of an intellectual position which finds in the drawing practice its favourite language.



SELECTED SOLO AND GROUP SHOWS:

MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, A Coruña (2018);

Open Studio, Via Farini, Milan (2018);

International Day of Light, Morgue Project Space, Chelsea College, London (2018);

Drawings from Lightning, MADEINBRITALY, London (2017);

Revolve: R, James Hockey and Foyer Galleries, UCA, Farnham (2017);

R:R, Hours Gallery, Bristol (2017); 

The London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015); 

Italia Happening, 130 artists' books, Salon Fur Kunstbuch, Wien (2015);  

Praestigium, Contemporary Artists from Italy, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2015); 

Fondazione Cini, Venice, Room&Book, ICA, London (2015); 

Upward Positive Leaders + Drawings from Lightnings, Kunstverein Neukölln, Kunstraum t27, Berlin (2014); 

Focus On Laura Santamaria, Choisi – one at the time, Lugano (2014); 

MAC Museo di Arte Contemporanea, Lissone (2014); 

Four to the Floor, Mestna Galerija, Nova Gorica (2014); 

Trilogie des Loches, Kunstverein Neukölln, Kunstraum t27, Berlin (2012).