“Apres nous, le deluge” (After us, the flood). This declaration is said to have come from Madame de Pompadour, chief mistress of King Louis XV of France. The artist Mimi Lauter, however, is using the phrase in the context of nature. Interested in water as a force both destructive and generative, Lauter imagines a post-flood world, pooling in remnants of the past, yet already lush, green, and ready to sprout again. In the textured layers of Lauter’s pencil scratchings, soft pastels, and oil paints there is a sense of melancholy filled with hope. This is her first solo show in Sao Paulo. —E.C.