Can the night have legs to keep on going? Francisca Pinto, Manuel Queiró, Mariana Malheiro and Ricardo Marcelino are proving with one leg behind their backs that, indeed, the night does have legs and is willing to swing around. Noite com pernas [Night with legs], a group exhibition featuring works by the four artists, at Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes, redefines the concept of painting. The theme is the darkness of the night: the night of sleepwalkers, the night of dreams and whimsy, the night of somnambulists and wanderers, the night of letting fears and anxieties take hold, or the dark night of the subconscious, the very same night in David Lynch’s cinema, where the figures are shadows and Specters. All these nights belong inside the room and their ultimate expression is painting – on paper, canvas or wall.

They too are the face of a new breed of artists who have reconnected with painting without any shame or bias, making it their trademark (along with a number of others, such as Sara Mealha, responsible for the graphic layout of the exhibition text). As we know, painting has always been regarded as a powerful tool of expression, constantly reinvented and revisited, from prehistory to the Renaissance, from the great French salons to the rejection of postmodernism, reflecting the social, cultural and technological shifts of the times (whilst also bringing another technology to the technique). But Noite com pernas turns painting into a pun and popular expressions into titles; there are three moments when everything is flipped upside down: a mural, loose paintings on the walls and a showcase in the centre of the room.

Manuel Queiró opens the exhibition with a mural. Twelve thoughts are drifting fresh or glued onto a base painted warm white, on the icy white of the gallery walls – the traditional white cube. The narrative spills out beyond the openings (contained by the physical constraints of the venue) and this colour difference (between the painted surface and the surface yet to be worked on) is enough to turn the wall into a large canvas. A mural that takes as its starting point the painter’s individuality and moves towards the abstract reproduction of figures in the painting(s). The “abstract figure”, as well as the nocturnal tones, is what connects the other artists. “What does contemporary figuration mean?” – they wonder. For Ricardo Marcelino, the answer is not a photographic depiction, but a blurred one, like an erased snapshot reminiscent of chalk on slate or a half-forgotten memory – or even a déjà vu feeling half-present in the family photo album – for Mariana Malheiro, the brushstrokes (which are also oil) are liquid and, one layer upon another, add density and depth to the canvases. From this thickness of interrupted lines, the figure is born. When we mention a narrative line in Manuel Queiró’s mural, that same line draws the profile of a face, whose nose is the key element of any identity and then guides the words in the wall text, leaping to the exhibition text, ultimately outlining the floating faces in Francisca Pinto’s canvases. Figures loosely tied to neutral backgrounds, as if they were talking balloons. What are these figures and what are they attempting to tell us? And, having learned that the night is the backdrop, the “figure” is the exhibition’s central character, whether through partially recognisable representations, twisted and contorted human figures, or entirely non-figurative compositions where there is no direct mention of anything specific.

Without breaking their legs, the four artists chase the “figure” in an open studio of search and experimentation, showing us that painting does have a leg to stand on. Noite com pernas is on display until June 22 on the first floor of Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes.