Fundo sem Fundo by Sérgio Fernandes [1], at Centro de Arte Oliva [2], curated by Andreia Magalhães, is based on a residency where the artist developed a creative and investigative project on colour and visual perception, between his studio in Lisbon and the art institution. The exhibition presents about forty paintings made between 2021 and 2022, showing the work that Fernandes has been deepening, prioritising abstract painting with a chromatic range of reds, violets, blues and dark greens. The assemblage highlights each of the oil paintings, in compositions of several dimensions, arranged by colour spaces as if it were a kind of gradient, where several tones, veils and colour layers stand out, perceptible by the light, shadows and position of the visitor, in vaulted rooms where an industrial complex once existed.

When we enter Fundo sem Fundo, it feels like we’re in a cinema or theatre room, right before a film or show starts. We only see the title and some specific lights that illuminate it, in front of a white wall in a semi-circle. In the first room, the light design is maintained, highlighting Perigoso, Divino, Maravilhoso (2022), Second Chance (2022) and Smoke (2022), setting the tone of the whole exhibition. In particular the poetic titles, the rectangular canvases of various dimensions and unframed, in non-figurative compositions, with narrow chromatic range by the author, and overlapping layers of paint, visible through the play of light, the sides and our step and scrutinising gaze.

Besides the supposed monochrome, a rectangle with another tone stands out in the centre of some paintings, where we are reminded of the German artist and educator Josef Albers (1888-1976), both for the series of paintings Homage to the Square (1949-1976) and for the essential book Interaction of Color (1963) conceived as a manual and teaching aid for artists students and educators, originally printed on silkscreen with 150 colour plates, in which the principles of his colour theory are presented in dialogue with Goethe’s Theory of Colours (1810) or Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Colour (1950). In Albers’ words: «In dealing with colour illusion or colour relativity, it is practical to distinguish factual facts from actual facts» [3]. The author means that we can perceive colour in two ways: either in isolation, through fixed and absolute theories, or contextually, experiencing it in the world, as part of one or more colours. In Fundo sem Fundo, we experience colour the second way, through the gaze of the artist and curator. According to the curatorial text: «In the exhibition, each painting allows us this experience of colour: we move and position ourselves in front and laterally, we move away and come closer to try to identify the planes, to distinguish the surface from the background, to understand where one colour begins and where it fades away to originate another».

In the following rooms, more paintings are revealed as the light diffuses and the colours approach red. Then we reach the central nave, where we see a set of works that stand out for their size and red colour, fitting in with the structure of the space. Without ignoring the last room, where there are twelve paintings on paper of the same size. Although they are not typical in the artist’s work, we can better understand his process and investigation, especially the quest for new compositions and aspects on colour and visual perception, as emphasised by Colour Field Painting and names like Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, or Clyfford Still.

In Red: The History of a Color (2017), French historian Michel Pastoureau points out: «Red is the archetypal colour, the first colour that humans mastered, manufactured, reproduced and divided into various shades; first in painting, then in dyeing. Above all other colours over the millennia. This also explains why, in many languages, the same word can mean “red”, “beautiful” or “colourful” at the same time» [4]. A leading expert in colour symbolism explains that red remains one of the colours with the most poetic, dreamlike and symbolic possibilities. Over the centuries, red is found in cave paintings, house construction, ceramic objects, fabrics and clothing, or jewellery and accessories. Symbolically, red is often associated with power, the sacred, victory and fertility, but above all with life, related to blood and fire.

In Fundo sem Fundo the red is highlighted and the spectator can imagine or recall symbologies or poetics. A moment of pause, solitude, or even uneasiness, given the large areas of colour in the relatively monochromatic and completely abstract paintings. With them, the texture of the paint, the mixture of the pigments and the luminance, saturation and temperature of the colour in intimate connection with the space, our body and vision are perceptible.

Fundo sem Fundo runs until October 2 at Centro de Arte Oliva.

[1] https://cargocollective.com/sergiofernandes

[2] https://centrodearteoliva.pt/exposicao/fundo-sem-fundo/

[3] In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZX0Xj9-Y

[4] Pastoureau, M. (2017). Red: The History of a Color. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p.7.