Where Color Breathes into Immensity

English version of the curatorial text.

It’s the vastness of nature that moves me the most—how it humbles us and reminds us that we’re part of something infinitely larger. I paint to express that feeling of awe, of being part of something vast and alive. That is what I carry into every canvas.

—Betina Attas

Where Color Breathes into Immensity showcases a selection of works by Betina Attas, marking her first solo exhibition in New York City at the Consulate General of Argentina. Attas has been painting for over twenty-five years and spent the last decade exploring the emotional and spiritual dimensions of landscapes. Leaving behind figuration, she cultivated a personal abstract language through which she captures the vastness of nature and the internal emotions it stirs. Her practice—grounded in direct encounters with the natural world—is rooted in the expressive power of color, the fluidity of gesture, and the transformative possibilities of process. In her paintings, she contrasts color, which creates not just the background but also a field of energy, with branchlike and flickering visual calligraphy, establishing a dialogue between rootedness and transcendence. The result is an intimate experience of color, perception, and presence that transcends mere representation.

Attas’s path into abstraction mirrors the larger evolution that defined much of 20th- century painting. As modernism reshaped the art world, artists began to move decisively away from figuration, seeking new ways to express deeper, often indescribable experiences and the metaphysical qualities of the natural world. This departure was not only conceptual but also technical; artists such as Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, and Morris Louis pioneered innovative techniques and incorporated them into their creative processes. Dripping, staining, and pouring paint directly onto raw canvas shifted the focus from image creation to the act of painting itself. Process and accident became essential compositional elements to reveal sentimental and unconscious impulses. They redefined painting as an event—an open, fluid interaction between artist, material, and surface, reinforcing the idea that spontaneity carries emotional truth. As Jackson Pollock famously said, "The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.”

Attas embarked on a journey similar to that of many of the century’s most influential painters. She also began her artistic career by studying hyperrealism and academic oil techniques for several years. Yet she evolved into a process of unlearning, gradually letting go of strict form in favor of emotion and the spur of the moment—“little by little I began to deconstruct myself,” she recalls. Attas distances herself from compositional perfection: “I stopped making the perfect painting so I could truly express myself,” she explains. She turned to acrylics, inks, and resins, mediums that dried quickly and resisted overworking.

The starting point of Attas’ transition was a rigorous meditation routine. By embracing slowness, stillness, and reflection, she allows images to emerge from within the act of painting rather than being imposed upon it. She begins her paintings without a fixed image in mind: “I make a stain,” she says, “and then I look to see what I can find in it”. Her work is created through a process that is both physical and contemplative; her gestures evoke not topography but pulse—marks of the unseen energies that shape nature, as well as our emotional worlds. In her paintings, the horizon becomes not a line, but a vibration, and color becomes the language through which vastness is felt rather than seen: expansive, infinite, and alive. As Agnes Martin once wrote, “Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings”.

Attas’s engagement with color is fundamental to her work and plays a central role in expressing the vastness she desires to manifest. Rather than serving as mere surface, they become atmosphere—something breathed, inhabited—representing states of being. Her palette, dominated by deep blues, silvers, and soft whites, carries emotional weight. Blue, in numerous variations, serves as a spiritual axis, evoking the sea and the sky, and providing a space for contemplation. In many works, light appears not just to illuminate but to be embedded within the canvas itself, producing a kind of inner glow. Her use of silver and white glazes creates shimmering atmospheres—light dispersed across the canvas like celestial dust or distant stars. “What connects me the most is color—some specific color that reaches me in a special way, and from there, the work begins; some transport me to wonderful places I have traveled to, others to inner worlds I reach through meditation,” she recalls.

A key piece in the exhibition, Beyond the Light 9, is a large-scale striking blue composition, a testament to Attas’ mature style. A vertical field of luminous, layered blues shifts from deep ultramarine to light turquoise, immediately evoking a sense of immensity in the observer. “Blue is the color I use the most. I gravitate toward this palette in all its tones. I try to invent different blues, mixing and diluting their components in distinct layers”, Attas explains. From the lower edge of the canvas, a dense thicket of tangled black lines rises upward, resembling roots or silhouettes of wild grasses, or a memory of an underwater reef. The lines emerge organically, mimicking natural growth and combined with the limitless background, create an impression that is both grounded and weightless at the same time.

Beyond the Horizon 4 represents her other prevailing color scheme, where the palette shifts dramatically to a monochromatic range of ivory, grays, and off-whites. While the composition retains the same foundational structure as the previous painting, here the background opens into a lighter, almost cosmic space. The upper field is a wash of whites and silvery grays, marked by splattered stains that evoke the appearance of snow or atmospheric dust. The organic mass at the bottom is rich in texture and movement, feeling alive, chaotic, and fertile. The speckled upper space contrasts with this density, offering a sense of lift, air, or distant stars. Again, the success of her art lies in the artistic composition of contrasting elements-dark and light, material and ethereal, density and dispersion. These atmospheric surfaces recall Mary Corse’s experiments with light and perception, who sought to embed light itself into the surface of the canvas, using materials like glass microspheres to activate the viewer’s perception. “Painting, to me, has never been about the paint, but what the painting can make you feel,”3 Mary Corse.

Helen Frankenthaler once said, “My pictures are full of abstract climates and not nature per se, but a feeling.”4 In Where Color Breathes into Immensity, the overall effect is a meditative, emotional, and immersive experience. Attas offers something rare: an invitation to drift into, observe, and feel the immensity, while simultaneously providing a space to feel grounded in nature. Her work—earthly and transcendental—speaks not of landscape, but from it.

Curatorial text by Josefina Vilela

Solo exhibition “Where Color Breathes Into Immensity”

Consulate General of Argentina in New York, 2025.

Read the original English text

It’s the vastness of nature that moves me the most—how it humbles us and reminds us that we’re part of something infinitely larger. I paint to express that feeling of awe, of being part of something vast and alive. That is what I carry into every canvas.

—Betina Attas

Where Color Breathes into Immensity showcases a selection of works by Betina Attas, marking her first solo exhibition in New York City at the Consulate General of Argentina. Attas has been painting for over twenty-five years and spent the last decade exploring the emotional and spiritual dimensions of landscapes. Leaving behind figuration, she cultivated a personal abstract language through which she captures the vastness of nature and the internal emotions it stirs. Her practice—grounded in direct encounters with the natural world—is rooted in the expressive power of color, the fluidity of gesture, and the transformative possibilities of process. In her paintings, she contrasts color, which creates not just the background but also a field of energy, with branchlike and flickering visual calligraphy, establishing a dialogue between rootedness and transcendence. The result is an intimate experience of color, perception, and presence that transcends mere representation.

Attas’s path into abstraction mirrors the larger evolution that defined much of 20th- century painting. As modernism reshaped the art world, artists began to move decisively away from figuration, seeking new ways to express deeper, often indescribable experiences and the metaphysical qualities of the natural world. This departure was not only conceptual but also technical; artists such as Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, and Morris Louis pioneered innovative techniques and incorporated them into their creative processes. Dripping, staining, and pouring paint directly onto raw canvas shifted the focus from image creation to the act of painting itself. Process and accident became essential compositional elements to reveal sentimental and unconscious impulses. They redefined painting as an event—an open, fluid interaction between artist, material, and surface, reinforcing the idea that spontaneity carries emotional truth. As Jackson Pollock famously said, «The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.”

Attas embarked on a journey similar to that of many of the century’s most influential painters. She also began her artistic career by studying hyperrealism and academic oil techniques for several years. Yet she evolved into a process of unlearning, gradually letting go of strict form in favor of emotion and the spur of the moment—“little by little I began to deconstruct myself,” she recalls. Attas distances herself from compositional perfection: “I stopped making the perfect painting so I could truly express myself,” she explains. She turned to acrylics, inks, and resins, mediums that dried quickly and resisted overworking.

The starting point of Attas’ transition was a rigorous meditation routine. By embracing slowness, stillness, and reflection, she allows images to emerge from within the act of painting rather than being imposed upon it. She begins her paintings without a fixed image in mind: “I make a stain,” she says, “and then I look to see what I can find in it”. Her work is created through a process that is both physical and contemplative; her gestures evoke not topography but pulse—marks of the unseen energies that shape nature, as well as our emotional worlds. In her paintings, the horizon becomes not a line, but a vibration, and color becomes the language through which vastness is felt rather than seen: expansive, infinite, and alive. As Agnes Martin once wrote, “Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings”.

Attas’s engagement with color is fundamental to her work and plays a central role in expressing the vastness she desires to manifest. Rather than serving as mere surface, they become atmosphere—something breathed, inhabited—representing states of being. Her palette, dominated by deep blues, silvers, and soft whites, carries emotional weight. Blue, in numerous variations, serves as a spiritual axis, evoking the sea and the sky, and providing a space for contemplation. In many works, light appears not just to illuminate but to be embedded within the canvas itself, producing a kind of inner glow. Her use of silver and white glazes creates shimmering atmospheres—light dispersed across the canvas like celestial dust or distant stars. “What connects me the most is color—some specific color that reaches me in a special way, and from there, the work begins; some transport me to wonderful places I have traveled to, others to inner worlds I reach through meditation,” she recalls.

A key piece in the exhibition, Beyond the Light 9, is a large-scale striking blue composition, a testament to Attas’ mature style. A vertical field of luminous, layered blues shifts from deep ultramarine to light turquoise, immediately evoking a sense of immensity in the observer. “Blue is the color I use the most. I gravitate toward this palette in all its tones. I try to invent different blues, mixing and diluting their components in distinct layers”, Attas explains. From the lower edge of the canvas, a dense thicket of tangled black lines rises upward, resembling roots or silhouettes of wild grasses, or a memory of an underwater reef. The lines emerge organically, mimicking natural growth and combined with the limitless background, create an impression that is both grounded and weightless at the same time.

Beyond the Horizon 4 represents her other prevailing color scheme, where the palette shifts dramatically to a monochromatic range of ivory, grays, and off-whites. While the composition retains the same foundational structure as the previous painting, here the background opens into a lighter, almost cosmic space. The upper field is a wash of whites and silvery grays, marked by splattered stains that evoke the appearance of snow or atmospheric dust. The organic mass at the bottom is rich in texture and movement, feeling alive, chaotic, and fertile. The speckled upper space contrasts with this density, offering a sense of lift, air, or distant stars. Again, the success of her art lies in the artistic composition of contrasting elements-dark and light, material and ethereal, density and dispersion. These atmospheric surfaces recall Mary Corse’s experiments with light and perception, who sought to embed light itself into the surface of the canvas, using materials like glass microspheres to activate the viewer’s perception. “Painting, to me, has never been about the paint, but what the painting can make you feel,”3 Mary Corse.

Helen Frankenthaler once said, “My pictures are full of abstract climates and not nature per se, but a feeling.”4 In Where Color Breathes into Immensity, the overall effect is a meditative, emotional, and immersive experience. Attas offers something rare: an invitation to drift into, observe, and feel the immensity, while simultaneously providing a space to feel grounded in nature. Her work—earthly and transcendental—speaks not of landscape, but from it.