A closer look

João Queiroz (Lisboa, Portugal, 1957)

Sem título, 2008 - 2009

• Untitled, 2008 - 2009
• Oil on canvas
• 189 x 287 cm Espessura da grade: 4,2 cm
• Coll. Fundação de Serralves - Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto, Portugal. Acquisition 2009
• João Queiroz’ artistic practice has always been linked to the landscape genre as a model of representation. More than a constant theme in his work, nature is the pretext for sophisticated exercises of visual exploration challenging the viewer’s attention. Queiroz’ work is characterized by a very distinct process of image-creation: his paintings are almost always the result of the same methodology, which entails three different stages. The artist begins by making freehand drawings, from which he then produces watercolours, transferring the codes of representation of drawing into the codes of painting. At a third stage, using the watercolours as the exclusive referents, Queiroz conceives and creates paintings in which scale enlargement and adaptation to new plastic materials (oil paint) bring about an object that is already far removed from the initial referent, but still recognizable as a landscape. This painting is a remarkable example of how the codes of representation of the landscape can lead us into believing that the place depicted in the image in front of us does (or did) exist. It is only after a more careful observation that we verify that the hasty and brusque brushstrokes have no realistic intentions whatsoever, that the colours elude the natural pantone and that the scale relationship between the elements does not exactly follow nature or the laws of geometry.