For the past two years, the artist Dani Cavalier has been developing her artistic research and practice around what she calls Solid Paintings. Cavalier starts with the foundational elements of conventional painting, such as the stretcher, woven canvas, colors, and composition, but instead of using paint and brush, she works with colorful scraps of Lycra that she collects from swimwear factories in Rio de Janeiro. In her solid painting, the artist moves away from the moment of paint and brush — focusing instead on the textile aspect, considering the fabric that constitutes the canvas. Cavalier constructs her artwork by wrapping the entire stretcher in an interwoven composition of colors that exist without an inside or outside, without a front or back.
