The exhibition is a game of encounters between poetic and visual languages, along with formal approaches that derive from methods of making, empathies, and the questions posed by the artistic proposals of its authors: Maria Ribeiro, Miguel António Domingues, and Daniel Mattar.
From my perspective, the exhibition's title reflects this formal and relational play that I sought to establish in the solutions and materialization of each artist’s works in the gallery space, as well as in the shared space between each piece: a line, a beam, a blade – line, beam, blade. Creating a different space.
· linhatravelâmina is, in a free and inventive form, an approximation to a tongue twister, but it is also a key, not necessarily an index, to observe in the artists' work the various relationships between these elements, which, while seemingly belonging solely to the realms of geometry, construction, and everyday life, are also the materialization of the structure of the works, thus becoming objects appropriated and integrated into the artistic creation.
The architecture of the room played a pivotal role in the tripartite dialogue that preceded the exhibition, summoning diverse possibilities, as well as the encounters determined by some works that redefine a new design of the space, at times creating intervals, wide angles, settings, markers, a dialogue between abstract works that suggest presences, memories, words.
One of Maria Ribeiro's works is like a line or a blade of copper that unfolds in continuous movement between the wall and its meeting with the floor plane, extending throughout the gallery space and marking the spectator’s bodily passage. The reflections, metallic shines in its organic materiality, invite us to reflect on the natural world in contrast with a structure/beam constructed in wood.
Miguel António Domingues presents a work of notable size, straddling drawing and sculpture. This piece, crafted in tracing paper, pigment, and metal, titled Big bird cut, creates spatial and visual relationships that surprise the viewer’s gaze and reconfigure our perception of space. It is a very subtle piece, contradicting in this sense its monumental scale and another of the author’s works, also crafted on tracing paper, along with three metal saw blades. A poetic and theatrical aura permeates all his works.
In the works of all three artists, we observe a rigorous metric, a constant attention to measurement, which is particularly relevant in Daniel Mattar’s work. One of his textured paintings is central to his contribution to the exhibition. Its form is like a trapezoid detached from its geometric matrix, while the color and texture are difficult to name, close to earthy tones and dark ochres in a very singular monochrome. The inclination of the grid composition, so characteristic of this phase of his work, seems in permanent motion and responds to the space’s architecture. Some smaller works guide us toward a new phase of his practice, revealed in a piece with disturbing layers.
Between the line, the beam, the blade, and all the other exhibited works, there are ways of making, reading, and sharing the artists' works, sharing our gaze, and drawing a different space.
linhatravelâmina
João Silvério
Curator
