the time is now…!

“The Border of the inquietude”

Opening 14.09. 6pm at Galeria São Mamede
Rua. Maestro Pedro Freitas Branco 11A/B – Lisbon.

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

Event Link | Gallery Link

June 19. 2023

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June 2023

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September 2023

The border of inquietude (Personale), Gallery São Mamede
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October 2023

Review The border of inquietude
Atelier Tigergasse, Vienna

February – March 2024

Artist in residence, São Paulo, Brazil