Balance: I Movement
2014
Galeria da Junta de Freguesia de Alvalade • Lisbon
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João Freire gathers in his painting the strictness of architecture, exercised in multiple projects that he has signed over the years, and the natural creativity that he experienced in the medium of design and marketing, developing ideas and concepts which were shaped in three-dimensions. Two universes that overlap in each artwork of his first individual exhibition, with the clearance of the shapes allowing overlapping interpretations.
Painting came naturally, as a complement to the professional activities, ever growing, seeking to capture the harmony in the human body that is made of contrast, right and left, divine and sensual. Dualities with more and more restrictions, subtracted until the simplest gesture of a hand remains, a hand that touches, opens, and closes in another hand. A body that embodies, figuratively, a detail of anatomy. Each movement of fingers that intertwine suggests an intention, deeply personal to the eyes of the beholder.
A bridge that is both technical and poetic, stained in grooves and veins, black and white, contrasting colors, cuts and scraps, highlighting images, shadows that capture the light, a smoothness of a plane that is filled with volume and shape; in harmony. Balance. First movement.
António Diegues Ramos
Translation by Nuno Beleza Freire