Cecilia Barreto
Cecilia Barreto develops a rigorous and deeply critical painting practice, in which she articulates visual abstraction, economic analysis, and territorial reflection to examine how global capitalism leaves material and symbolic traces in our society. Her work stands out for its ability to translate financial data —such as stock market graphs or market indicators— into plastic compositions that confront the viewer with the invisible languages of power. Throughout her evolution, she has expanded her focus from the direct representation of the economic to more contained painting, where capital appears as form, texture, or void. Her potency lies in the conceptual coherence with which she addresses complex themes —such as extractivism, abstract value, or the violence of the landscape—, always resolving them through a refined, material, and formally precise technical language. In a contemporary context saturated with information, Barreto offers a painting that not only represents but thinks, dismantling the visual codes of the system from within the medium itself.
Financial information
Abstract Capital
Abstract Capital synthesizes her career into a refined pictorial language where capital is no longer just a subject, but a form. Through the use of industrial materials, contained compositions, and shiny or opaque surfaces, Cecilia creates paintings that embody the abstract logic of financial value. This series consolidates her approach: a practice where critique of the economic system is resolved through the materiality of the pictorial gesture itself.
America Alone
Cecilia Barreto's "América Sola" explores the political and economic tensions that shape North and Latin America, focusing on the influence of the United States and China on sovereignty and collective territories. Through installation, painting, and diagrams, she transforms treaties, megaprojects, and economic flows into atmospheres that highlight frictions between autonomy and dependence, memory and control, inviting reflection on power relations and possible futures.
Open Sky
Open Sky marks a shift towards territory as a surface intervened by capital. Based on research into open-pit mining, the artist incorporates topographical elements and stratified compositions that dialogue with fragments of financial information. With an earthy palette and material techniques, Cecilia turns the canvas into a space where economic data and devastated geography coexist, articulating a critique of the extractive model through painting.
Everybody Knows
Barreto expands her focus to the systemic scales of capital, influenced by Timothy Morton's notion of hyperobjects. Here, the financial no longer appears as explicit data, but as an overwhelming and almost ungraspable presence. Through condensed color blocks, compositional tensions, and floating forms, she develops a more contained abstract language, in which critique is manifested through formal accumulation rather than direct representation.
Happy Markets
Cecilia Barreto begins her critical exploration of financial market languages, appropriating stock charts, quotations, and structures from technical analysis as pictorial material. Through saturated compositions and references to digital interfaces, she translates these elements into the language of painting to highlight how the economic system constructs visual fictions of stability. This series inaugurates her working method: painting as a field of confrontation between formal abstraction and structural critique.
