Uncharted Shores: Manoel Veiga
McMullen Atrium | April 7–May 31, 2026
Brazilian artist Manoel Veiga was born in 1966, in Recife, the capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco. In 1985, he enrolled at the Federal University of Pernambuco to study electronic engineering and physics. Veiga’s career as an industrial engineer was curtailed when he decided to study drawing and painting, a subject he had enjoyed in childhood. After a period of apprenticeships and experimentation, the artist came to develop his own painting technique and abstract idiom.
Following the practice of abstract expressionists and engaging his training in physics, Veiga abandons traditional use of the brush. Instead, he places his substrate horizontally (or slightly tilted) on the floor. Carefully calibrated mixtures of acrylic paints and water, of suitable density and viscosity, are poured or splattered on the surfaces below. Veiga employs a vaporizer to spray additional water. The resultant flow of pigments invites physics to shape a work’s final appearance.
Fluid dynamics therefore serves as the conduit through which the artist conjures his painterly effects. The denser and more viscous paint suspensions diffuse into water non-uniformly, creating cascades of pigmented branches of varied widths and lengths. The process involves a complex interplay of several physical mechanisms, including gravitationally induced laminar flow, diffusion, mixing, and fluid instabilities.
When the paintings are displayed vertically, their expansive and nuanced patterns are severed from their mechanical roots, revealing a new kind of abstract space that evokes the contours of uncharted shores. Although static, these landscapes are imbued with a sense of movement, and, consequently, of passing time—a legacy of the physical processes the artist set in motion.
Curated by Andrzej Herczyński, Uncharted Shores is organized in conjunction with Art & Science: Perspectives & Prospects, a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Physics at Boston College (April 8–10) that focuses on the intersections of artistic and creative expression, mathematics, physics, neuroscience, and AI.