O lugar mais perto/The nearest place

LUÍSA JACINTO


O lugar mais perto/The nearest place

November 30 – January 26, 2013

Alecrim 50 

Rua do Alecrim, 48/50 1200-018 Lisboa




The body is never sad;

the body is the nearest

place where the blaze sings

It is in the soul that death makes its home

– Eugénio de Andrade

Galeria Alecrim50 is pleased to present “O lugar mais perto/The nearest place”, a selection of paintings, drawings and videos by Luísa Jacinto.

[…] Almost always – if not always – [Luísa Jacinto’s] paintings are in the world (of those very paintings) as the heart is in an organism. Almost always allowing a sort of pictorial essay – a very simple one, with one or two figures – to emerge, recurrently about the arrival of someone who tries and fails and hesitates and gathers silence in the colour of the scarce space in which he or she is self-enclosed (as a character on stage), in his/her adventure of another (and of him/herself) and stays in error and falling, missing the right words about what we really love, and also, probably, about the ones we love.

[…] Luísa Jacinto’s figuration constantly says: «We are from this world, but in this world we feel as foreigners among foreigners». And, nevertheless, this gravitates, almost always, around an apparent serenity.

[…] Her characters, far more real than idealized, come increased with a paradox: the possibility of the impossible. (…) And yet the painted object is apparently still. And yet all these figures who are there, are here for an experience of the impossible and make a precise appeal to issues (much) beyond ar t: to ethics, to law, to politics, to responsibility, to decision. […]”*

The series Flora (2011-2012) is made by collages and interventions on reproductions of the botanical english plates of TheTemple of Flora,by Robert JohnThornton,c.1787-1837.

The video The Promise and the Dream (2009) starts from an veterotestamentary promise and reflects strategies of human desire and need.

This will be the first solo exhibition of the artist in Lisbon since the comprehensive show of her work – A single day is enough – which Museu Carlos Machado hosted in June 2012.

Luísa Jacinto (1984, Lisboa) currently lives and works in Lisbon. In 2009, she received her MA in Fine Art from Cen- tral Saint Martins – Byam Shaw School of Art, London. She has been exhibiting regularly since 2007.
Of special note among her group shows are Process and Transfiguration – Casa da Cerca, Almada, and 17 Ingredi- ents – Measures of Autonomy, curated by Shama Khanna and Blanche Craig, Studio One, London, 2009. Of special note among her solo shows are A single day is enough, curated by João Miguel Fernandes Jorge, Museu Carlos Machado, Azores, 2012; Unpunished desire, Galeria Alecrim 50, 2011;Things Change Quickly, Espaço Avenida – Sala Bebé, 2010. Luísa Jacinto’s is represented in private ans institutional collections, such as Madeira Corporate Service and Centro de Artes Arquipélago.

* João Miguel Fernandes Jorge,“One Always Fails to Speak of What One Loves”, from the catalog A single day is enough, Museu Carlos Machado, 2012.

Image: The Promisse and the Dream, video still, 2009