Exhibitions
'Oxigénio' by João Marçal explores painting as a space of memory and perception
The Alarcón Criado Gallery in Seville presents Oxigénio , João Marçal's first solo exhibition in this Seville space, a show that confirms the Portuguese artist as one of the most stimulating voices in contemporary Iberian painting. The exhibition does not present painting as a language confined to the canvas, but rather as an expanded territory where the support, the architecture, and the viewer's experience are inseparable parts of the work. In Oxigénio , Marçal transforms the act of painting into an investigation of perception, memory, and the very nature of the pictorial medium.
The exhibition brings together several lines of work that the artist has developed in recent years. The shaped canvases , or canvases with irregular shapes, challenge the traditional format of the painting and transform the support into an active element of the composition, while the tondos, inspired by the peace symbol, incorporate metallic pigments that generate a suggestive ambiguity between surface and volume. The painting ceases to be a two-dimensional illusion and acquires physical presence, reinforcing one of Marçal's main concerns: to make representation, object, and real space coexist in a single visual experience.
Also prominent in Oxigénio is the Neighbors series, comprised of vinyl interventions inspired by the decorative motifs of the camper vans that have proliferated in Lisbon as a consequence of the housing crisis. Using these everyday elements, the artist introduces a reflection on the concept of home, displacement, and the transient nature of contemporary existence. The domestic and the urban thus become metaphors for an identity that is always under construction, where the boundary between inside and outside remains deliberately open.
The core of Oxigenio is comprised of paintings inspired by the patterns on bus and train seats, a motif that has accompanied João Marçal since his student days and which he has transformed into a profound investigation of time, repetition, and memory. Created with thousands of tiny brushstrokes on unprimed linen, these works turn seemingly banal patterns into mental landscapes of great visual intensity. Repetition ceases to be a decorative device and becomes a reflection on movement, constant transformation, and the impossibility of two experiences being identical, establishing a suggestive dialogue with phenomenological approaches to perception.
The proposal culminates in an installation where numerous paintings leave the wall to be mounted on metal structures inspired by the handrails of public transportation. This decision expands the scope of painting and transforms Oxigénio into an installation where the artwork actively engages with the exhibition space and the visitor's body. More than a painting exhibition, João Marçal proposes an experience that challenges traditional dualisms between image and object, surface and volume, representation and reality. Oxigénio's greatest strength lies in this ability to expand the pictorial language without abandoning its essence, an exhibition that demonstrates how painting remains a privileged territory for reflecting on the contemporary world.
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