Fabiano Senk

Fabiano Senk (b.1992) is an urban figurative painter based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Utilizing dreamy color palettes of blues, yellows, and pinks, Senk creates both street works and paintings on canvas. Senk’s values and his outlook on life are evident in his compositions, as he incorporates what he sees as pillars of community into the narratives he tells. One will often encounter figures playing musical instruments in his works, as Senk sees music as a unifier of all people. Senk’s father taught him to play the guitar when he was just a boy. Every work that Senk creates he describes as a self portrait. The multitudes of himself are evident in the variety of figures he creates. The eye is the window to the soul, and as a result he creates figures with multiple eyes, reflecting the many different selves that one contains.

Oftentimes, figures of his paintings erupt with places merged with smaller figures, telling the history of a person through the places one came from, the people one knew, and the person one used to be. Senk finds the beauty in everyday life through his paintings. Even when diving into harder emotions in his work, he mentioned that he often incorporates the feeling of melancholy but that “It is different from sadness because it is more beautiful.” His works that he places throughout the streets of Sao Paulo tend to carry political undertones, as he tries to widen the perspectives of the people in his community. The street murals often relate to Brazilian politics and criticize conservative policies under the current leadership. Occasionally this flows into his works on canvas, as he will collage paper currency into his figures, creating monsters fabricated out of money, feeding on chaos and destruction.

Senk stayed with Chase Contemporary in August, 2022 for a month-long residency. Throughout his time in the artist studio, he experimented with mediums and scale, executing a portfolio of impressive work throughout his stay. He has shown in Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, and Curitiba.