Remaining within
Künstler/in
Hugo Canoilas
(geb. 1977 in Lissabon, Portugal)
Date2018
ClassificationsMalerei
MediumFlüssiges Acryl auf Molino
Dimensions75,4 × 59,3 × 2,7 cm
Credit LineArtothek des Bundes
Object number28390
DescriptionHugo Canoilas’s paintings are made using a special technique of ink and high fluid acrylic paint on unprimed, raw linen. This technical aspect contains qualities which make his work resemble some oriental practices of calligraphy and painting. The images depicted are processed with an abstract thought inherent to painting, performed by the artist – that is to say, transforming a form into a gesture that is performed once on the canvas. All gestures in his paintings are final, it being impossible to remake or erase decisions or mistakes. Painting then becomes an instrument to measure the human; an approach that praises a weak and elastic idea - with the Etruscan frescoes in mind - as opposed to pure / Apollonian ideas.The work “Remaining within” is part of a series of paintings that take the ocean as a vast and unknown space for the projection of desires and hopes in a cultural, social and political manner. The space between representation and abstraction is a gap where our projections can enter. It is a space where the viewer becomes an active maker, inscribing something from her or his inner self, or from the real, into these paintings, and territorializing them.
Taking the painting "Remaining within" as an example, it developed from an image of a colourful fish in the ocean and remains in a tension between abstraction and figuration. It can also be perceived as an attempt to keep the nature of painting, and its forces, alive – a certain consciousness in looking beyond the depicted motif.
The above-mentioned procedural qualities of these paintings loop a full circle and connect an inherent interest in nature with the natural process of paint flowing on the linen. The force of water expanding and contracting in zones of colour is closer to nature than to something human-made. The act of painting is then something started by the artist that also develops in front of him.
Text: Galerie Martin Janda, Wien
[[missing key: detailactions.not-available-label]]
