On the horizon the first light is born and the last one is extinguished. In this invisible line that separates the earth from the sky, there is the beginning and the end, the material and the intangible. Illustrating the world’s fantasies, the rainbow belongs to the horizon. But attempting to find its abundant wealth requires running endlessly. The horizon is an object of reflection, inspiration and contemplation for artistic creation. At Galeria Liminare, the horizon line was outlined by Carla Rebelo, Desali, Dalila Gonçalves, Diogo Evangelista, Gonçalo Preto and Henrique Biatto as a device for infinite paths.

As if it were a painting, O tempo faz-se visível e move-se com a paisagem (2016-2017) by Dalila Gonçalves displays sandpaper used in a furniture plant The horizontal movement draws lines of varying thicknesses and tones on the sandpaper. Tears of earthy colour gut the original blue and black paint, recalling the luminous re-emergence at dawn. Memory is also present: the sandpaper bears the marks of the objects they once polished. They are thus signs of presence and absence.

The horizon line is like time. It is beyond perception, it cannot be touched. The light that rises and falls towards the horizon also measures the days and is at the origin of many of our ideas about time. Natural phenomena, like sunrise and sunset, are circular moments repeated endlessly. Um momento que se repete continuamente III (2018), a sculpture by Carla Rebelo, is a reflection on the intangibility of time. Two mirrors, exposed in parallel, reflect each other, creating an infinite projection of this space-time, sometimes interrupted by the viewer’s image when they cross the portal created by the sculpture.

Further on, the focus is the gallery floor, where Henrique Biatto is showing Panorama (2021), an installation with approximately one thousand ceramic spheres. With different sizes and colours, they have been meticulously arranged at a similar distance from each other. Even though they are very close, they never touch, as if ruled by a mysterious magnetism. In smaller numbers, the black and brown spheres are balanced out among the white ones, in a visually harmonious arrangement. The vastness and extension of these pieces along the floor resembles the infinity of a landscape.

The sun is the grand symbol of the horizon, infinitely dipping and reappearing along that line. In Gonçalo Preto’s painting, the darkness is mitigated by a luminous focus that resembles a sun. With a detailed pictorial technique, the artist messes with our vision by depicting a blurred orange dot on a completely black background. Myopia (ORANGE) (2020) stimulates the eye that sees the painting, encouraging a reaction to darkness, blurring and abstraction.

There is always horizon in the landscape. Before the day ends, the path leads us to Desali’s work Rejeitos Revolta (2018). In a landscape painted on small wooden boards, Desali distorts the environment that the artist beholds, opting for the geometry of forms. In primary colours with pastel tones, the paint highlights the woody texture. In these small veins and signs, the landscape acquires relief. We can see multiple horizon lines over the painting’s composition.

Night appears in the exhibition’s second room, with Diogo Evangelista’s audio-visual work. The electronic sounds that flooded our senses as we walked through the first room are now associated with the hypnotic image of Sungazing (2013). The room’s darkness contrasts with the sun’s glance in the first frames of the work, where we see an intense light being expanded. Abstract and colourful patterns emerge, with geometric signs slowly sliding into each other. The transition between images prompts the camera to move away, making what we see progressively clearer: patterns of Moroccan weaving. After twenty minutes, the sound intensifies and the image reverts to the initial sun, closing a sonic and visual challenge, where the sensation is transcendent.

At Galeria Liminare, the horizon is the medium for dialogue about the issues of perception, time and landscape.

The group exhibition O horizonte é o meio, curated by a group of curators from the Postgraduate Course in Art Curatorship at NOVA FCSH, is on show until 19 November 2022 at the Galeria Liminare.