Between lightness and density, line and colour, brightness and darkness. Landscape overviews, close-ups exposing the stitching and nerve of both pigment and line, in a ralenti travelling, according to the gradation of tones, colours, lights and shadows, an idea that comes extremely close to time suspension. Solombra by Luísa Jacinto at Galeria Quadrado Azul (Porto) explores the possibilities of painting in modern times as a transhistorical process, a reflection on its material, formal and aesthetic components, reassessing its bonding qualities. Jacinto contemplates painting beyond its medium and white walls, mindful of the spectator’s perspective, movements and perception in the exhibition site. As part of her latest exhibition, Shining Indifference (2024) at Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia (MAAT) – where we find similarities with Solombra – the artist asks: ‘What is painting, and what can painting be? What is a medium? What does it mean to add colour or subtract light?’ [1]

Her questions are reflected in the exhibition project at Quadrado Azul. In the accompanying exhibition text, João Sousa Cardoso states: ‘Solombra is a threshold of perception, an intangible doorway to the mysteries of the tactility of the act of seeing and the urge to see accurately so as to better understand the signs of painting, the sensory space it engenders (immediately rhythmic) and the aesthetic nature of its material limits’. Jacinto’s artistic practice is rightly rethinking the notion of painting, but it does have a sense of poetry, if we consider the form, rhythm and composition of the paintings within the space that unfolds and becomes meaningful over the course of the visit. Indeed, the exhibition title is the same as the final book of poetry by Brazilian author Cecília Meireles.

The exhibition is split into two distinct moments. There is a series of canvases displayed along the two walls of the venue, with different supports, such as linen, cotton or polyester canvas, but also contrasting techniques, such as oil, acrylic, spray or embroidery. Colour stains, marks, ribs, sutures, traces and fabric lines stand out, in the rhythm of our steps, breaks, retreats and approximations. A series of paintings made up of synthetic rubber, LED tubes, steel and electrical cables, with an impressive density, colour and luminosity, juxtaposed by polyester and resin thread crates, differing in their transparency, lightness and chromatic gradient, stand in the centre of the gallery. Vibrant fabrics hang from the ceiling like waves, creating superimpositions, diaphanous moments and opacities, colours and shades, movements and interruptions. We can recall William Turner, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Mark Rothko and American colour field painting in this historical relationship with painting, through a contemporary lens.

The exhibition project reflects an idea of cinema, using a montage concept mindful of the timelessness of the aesthetic experience, one of the key materials of the seventh art. As a matter of fact, in his text, Sousa Cardoso stresses this point, noting that one of the canvases is entitled Cinema (2022). He also emphasises the haptic nature of the audience’s involvement, the rhythm and movement of their bodies across the space. The gallery then becomes a sort of scenic stage, or plateau. To quote director and filmmaker Peter Brook: ‘I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”[2]

Luísa Jacinto’s Solombra is on show until January 18, 2025 at Galeria Quadrado Azul (Porto).

[1] Artista em https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNdcCqkUg6U
[2] Brook, P. (2016). O Espaço Vazio. Lisboa: Orfeu Negro, p. 7.