By situating painting as an optical challenge and a practice inscribed in metalinguistic thinking, João Marçal (Coruche, Portugal, 1980) is focused on the formal exercise of understanding his “intimate life”. Through a “sentimental abstractionism”, the images and visual experiences of everyday life, so trivial that they become invisible, are decontextualised and rethought by the artist through colour, geometry and repetition.

In his work, the upholstery of the buses he travels in, the wallpaper from his childhood bedroom, almost obsolescent photographic material packaging or old cigarette packets take on an abstract dimension through formal and pictorial exercises. Engaged in a historical and technical understanding of the practice, the artist invokes impressions of light, repetition of patterns and pixelation of images to create spatiotemporal illusions within the painting, displacing it and challenging its autonomy. In manifest determination, João Marçal pursues an epistemological thought and a reflection on the place that painting can occupy: its metaphysical possibilities or its potential existence beyond physicality.

Angel’s Share, 2024

Mono sound, 20’39’’ (loop)

Co-production with: Pedro André (aka Crossfade Memory) and Pedro Augusto.

Courtesy of the artist.

20/05/19, 2023

Acrílico sobre linho

28/10/22, 2024

Acrílico sobre linho

25/03/18, 2024

Acrílico sobre linho

15/02/24, 2024

Acrílico sobre linho

Courtesy of the artist.

Commissioned by this Biennial, João Marçal’s Angel’s Share is an intervention in the Monastery’s cistern that consists of a series of new paintings, lacquered iron structures and an acousmatic piece developed in partnership with musicians Pedro André (aka Crossfade Memory) and Pedro Augusto. The title comes from the translation of the idiomatic expression that refers to the volume of liquid that evaporates during whisky maturation. The title’s metaphorical ghostly presences also permeate the artist’s paintings. The painter’s performance, lost forever; the layers of paint hidden in the overlays; the impossibility of visualising detail and whole simultaneously; the medium that “disappears” to reveal the work; the liquid acrylic material that evaporates from the surface of the painting to fix the paint — these are all “memories” of painting’s phantasms.

Sound emerges as a conciliatory element that subtly and poetically summons these presences. The metal structures, meanwhile, evoke the imaginary universe of public transport and intercity trains, bringing back a melancholy provided by travelling and these spatiotemporal contexts. Finally, Angel’s Share presents a second series of three small-scale paintings installed in separate rooms, which recall the universe of VHS cassette design — as a kind of “futuristic” graphic ode to the moving image, which today is taking on nostalgic contours.