Grasping the totality or attempting to translate and dematerialise everything behind the work of José Loureiro, as well as trying to account for his choices or lack thereof – to go down this road and not go up that one – proves to be a Herculean labour, one that is ungrateful and senseless, I would go so far as to say. To tackle this endeavour, seeking to justify its mechanical gesture, the issues of scale, the overview of movements and the autonomy of colour, would be to set oneself up for failure. I suggest approaching this article in the same way I have done this assignment – to open some doors, close a few others, look around and continue on our way. In an effort to reach the end (of the question and the world) and yet come across a new path (an alleyway, the Flores one), in an exercise that always leads us to find ‘a thing within a thing, within something else’^[1].

Daffodils. First of all, these stretched-out figures look like they have been struck by lightning^[2]. Bounded by the edges of the canvas, and perhaps by some other unknown factor, they are unique, possessing an energy of their own, presenting themselves in a frozen state, on the threshold between organised matter and chaos, as if their fates were being constantly postponed. Naturally, they take us back to the story of those who crumble to vanity and the infatuation with the self. They remind us of the issue of obsession, identity, the ego, the distorted reflection of reality, crisis, fallibility and, maybe, self-discovery. A complex unfolding process in which everything that is reflected is thrown into disarray. One displays Destreza (2024), another Narciso enverga a primeira gravata (2024), another comes across Descoberta da pólvora (2024)… All together, they display an appearance, or a set of appearances, reality proposals, which are taken from somewhere, at some point in time. These 16 figures, in a constant state of tension, mutable and indefinitely unfinished, either try to adapt or escape. Difficult to say for sure, but finding an answer seems beside the point. In any case, they bend and twist in an intriguing routine, committed to metamorphosing into a thing that is still nameless. The outcome of this unknown transformation seems less relevant than the process itself. We are witnessing the longing to escape or the resignation to stay. To be or to become. A state of repose that is only magnified by Loureiro’s gesture.

They all share a common formal vocabulary. Trunks that stretch into arms and legs, which grow into hands and feet whose ends are ‘garish nails, like full stops’^[3]. In restless poses, suggesting a sense of irony and the stress of being, they are constructed through the use of a visceral black that emerges as a continuous flow, surrounding other polychrome striped motifs and screaming, tidy and well-defined patterns. This exhibition witnesses an apparently continuous adjustment process, an endless trial and error cycle accentuated by the stretching of the shapes, extending vertically or horizontally, to reflect a struggling state, an endeavour to assert oneself in a place that never seems enough for the growing pains.

Also, the end of the roads. Let’s address that, the title of the exhibition. We may regard Beco das Flores, Canedo do Mato as an invitation to reflect on limits, existence and perception. A hamlet near the artist’s birthplace – Mangualde – where all roads come to an end, it fulfils a symbolic role in this case: it represents the end of the road, the physical and metaphorical limit. Paradoxically, it is a meeting and a revelation point, where the possibility of reflecting – on the world, on ourselves – is amplified. ‘Even at the end of the world, all things can exist or end, everything can be reflected upon. We go to Canedo do Mato to see ourselves, to look at ourselves again, but the reflection is something immaterially enlarged, it does not correspond to reality.”^[4]

Beco das Flores also comes into being in this liminal space, where the world meets an end. The alley within the end, an end contained within the end, undermines the idea of wholeness: just where everything appears to be coming to a closure, there is yet another development. The seemingly small, tight and dead-end space carries a sense of infinite reverberation. Like the universe of the Narcissus, it is a multiplying space, where the end is doubled, intensified – it is a suspended state. This idea of going to Canedo do Mato “to see ourselves again” is also connected to the water reflection evoked in the myth of Narcissus. An experience of self-recognition, but also of alienation. We see ourselves, but never exactly as we are; the reflection is invariably different, expanded or distorted. As if there, where everything ends, reflection takes on a transcendental dimension: we are not faced with what we are, but with what we could be, with the possibility of transformation and multiplicity. Like the exhibition itself, Beco das Flores is a both an end and a beginning, a place where finitude lives alongside the possibility of expansion. It is one thing within another, where the boundaries of the world reveal new possibilities for contemplation and experience. It calls to mind an existential condition, a sort of open invitation to reflect on the end as a transitional space, on reality as something ever beyond the visible, and on ourselves as unfinished reflections of an identity in perpetual transformation, just like Loureiro’s figures.

The gallery is transformed into a place where all roads end, but also a place where all the options for a route – even if illusory, as in a reflection – unfold. Ultimately, this is a possible reflection on the circular nature of life and the boundaries of human understanding. A deliberate hesitation, a dead-end aporia offering new avenues of thought and understanding. In this case, things become alien to themselves, identity is unsettled and exceeds the limits of the subject and of representation. A call to emptying through indefinability is perceived. We are hurled out of ourselves, faced with the possibility (or impossibility) of anchoring to a stable point.

We wait our turn to march in Beco das Flores, Canedo do Mato^[5], and then remind ourselves: there is always room for an unfolding – of the body, of gesture and, above all, of understanding.

The exhibition is open until January 11, 2025 at Galeria Cristina Guerra.

^[1] José Loureiro in conversation about the exhibition.
^[2] In the Shade of a Tree, José Loureiro: Croque-couleur – Les presses du réel, 2024 – p. 25. Edition released as part of the exhibition at Frac Grand Large, Dunkirk.
^[3] José Loureiro in conversation about the exhibition.
^[4] José Loureiro in conversation about the exhibition.
^[5] José Loureiro in conversation about the exhibition.