Gallery São Mamede | Lisbon
The Project
In the aesthetic and visual development of the research in which the spatial observation of modern and contemporary architecture of the gaps and niches, the pause between composition movement and the relationship between space and the viewer-work correlation, as well as the material, its relationship between its own space is always revisiting and recreating interactions and tensions. The full and the empty, an experience that makes it possible to position in a place of object and subject.
This reading opens up levels of multidimensional experience that, although exclusively visual becomes poetic.
That is why this project is born as a site specific to be developed and presented in the Galeria São Mamede as a place for a “Tectonic Experience”.
Text © Luiz Martins 2023
The Work
Continuing the series exhibited at the National Museum of Science and Natural History entitled “Tectonics Experiences and the Experiences of the Tectonics” in Lisbon (2020), will be presented under the title “The Frontier of the inquietude”.
A series of works in which I portray myself as the subject of my fragilities: the fragility of an idea, of existence, of artistic commitment, and the challenges of navigating everyday boundaries, whether they are physical, cultural, social, or human. Implicitly, I acknowledge the systemic changes in geographic dynamics, thoughts, paths, and concerns, as I endeavor to traverse these borders and confront the struggles of survival.
Having drawing, as a compositional starting point, allows me to expand this experience on canvases, sculptures and installations, where masses of black and white space a raw tone of the fabric and original surfaces of wood can be appreciated, that in overlapped and veiled layers delimit this kind of archeological cartographic labyrinth, an “uneven urban cartography” of non-conformist latitudes, what I call “no place” or “no space”, and force, due to their composition, to twist or “displace” in order to re-visit them.
The same happens with installation works, where the work rises, changes from vertical to horizontal and vice-versa, denoting a kind of pictorial work in three dimensions to “enter” the space.
A selection of 55 artworks will be exhibited at the Sao Mamede Art Gallery in Lisbon between September and October 2023, and 26 artworks at the Sao Mamede Art Gallery in Oporto between March and May 2024.
Gustavo Mendez-Liska | the border of the inquietude
Project organized by the São Mamede Gallery in which the artist Gustavo Mendez-Liska presents a series of works with a profound commitment to painting and sculpture, whose practices are linked to the constant refinement of techniques and treatments of form, colour, light and space. In Gustavo’s case, the meditative character and dense
geometric constructions in which he works the space as the body of the work, the spectator as the body of a structure that establishes a temporal suspension that hovers over the concept of his research that comes from the beginning, there in Caracas in his based on the concretism and geometric structures of the great South American masters.
He crossed the ocean, here in Austria he continues his tireless research based on his based on his fellow countrymen, not letting escape his keen curiosity to broaden his horizons beyond the pictorial technique of painting and drawing, today Gustavo presents us with not only a group of work that I can consider powerful and dynamic graphic structures, but also a strong unfolding and knowledge of his research, now influenced by the European school, specifically the Italian Arte Povera movement, working on the limits of counter culture and of great masters such as Giuseppe Penone, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, to name but a few of them.
In the work it is not enough just to demonstrate through cut-outs, overlaps, lines and black masses black that invades the pictorial space, but we can also feel, visualize, penetrate in this world of plots and locks that Gustavo presents us with.
This body of work produced between 2018 and 2023 is presented to us in a globalised, universal because Gustavo’s work could be produced anywhere in the world.
Here and in all other places and continents that want to appreciate and connect with Gustavo’s work is to allow us to have a piece of himself, of his story and of his journey the streets, alleys and lanes of a cold Vienna, but which, with Gustavo’s work, becomes warm and welcoming.
Text © Luiz Martins 2023
