Luísa Ferreira at Galeria Sá da Costa

article

DATE

27 Mar 2026

AUTHOR

Carla Carbone

Luísa Ferreira at Galeria Sá da Costa

AUTHOR

Carla Carbone

Most of the photographs presented by Luísa Ferreira in the exhibition Uma nova história, at Galeria Sá da Costa, were produced between the late eighties and early nineties of the 20th century. Gesturality, abstraction, and a return to painting, with great intensity, in the art of the 1980s, were also felt in photography. The artist's work, present in the exhibition, all previously unseen and curated by David Willis, does not appear to be very far from this previous influence.

It was in the 1980s that painting experienced a massive return, at a time when it seemed to have been eradicated and seen as an obsolete medium. Painting returned with force, proving its relevance within a metaphorical and poetic urgency, despite being, at the time, more associated with the art market¹ than with critical thinking² and a dense, rigorous discourse. However, artists such as Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, and Julian Schnabel justified the return to this new painting and proved its relevance and depth within a contemporary context associated with allegory, drama, emotional wounds, the return of history, multiple time periods, and narrative³.

The intervention of the gesture, of the corrosive (caustic) element, and of the generous stain on the photograph offers multiple possibilities and opportunities in the sense of the singularity of the work, which is more difficult with the multiplicity of photography, this being embedded in the contention of technical reproducibility, and in the fading of the aura.

One of the artists in the 1980s who intervened, in a markedly pictorial way, on the surface of the photograph was Arnulf Rainer. Especially in his series of self-portraits, where he applied scraping and generous splashes of paint onto the surface of the photograph. The imperfections, the pictorial stains, the irregularities, and the concealment of the face were noticeable to the point of pure abstraction and absolute indistinction.

Luísa Ferreira conceals the figuration of bodies and the spatiality existing in the photographic image, with an operationality identical to Rainer's. While it's unknown if Rainer was a reference for the artist, we can nevertheless observe similarities in works currently on display at Galeria Sá da Costa. Some photographs appear entirely covered by pictorial layers, in which only a face is revealed, or a glimpse of a man's body that seems to gesture and dance. There is an allusion to a series by Ferreira, also currently on display at the gallery, which alludes to, or at least suggests, the artist's taste for the ambiguity of media, or at least for artistic transdisciplinarity. Bodies uncovered (in dialogue), intertwine, aggregate, stretch, forming human sculptures. They evoke dance, performance, installation, visual arts, and theatre. It is in this series, created in 1991, with a cinematic insinuation, that we observe the emphasis the artist places on the body. Unlike other compositions in the same exhibition, where the body is absent, revealed only by its contour line, this work, emptied of density, obscured and entangled in the acidic emulsions and scrapings that the artist inflicts on its forms, brings to the forefront the grainy emptiness of its pictorial backgrounds and dripping effects. The photograph thus loses its sense of place, becomes two-dimensional, but gains in aura.

Within the gallery space, we are captivated by a gestural quality that crumbles and meanders between the forms and contours inscribed on the concrete surface of the photographic image. The applied tones possess an impressive porosity. They conceal the light and transport the visitor, amidst shadows, into sepia and golden hues.

The exhibition is on view until April 1.

^[1] GODFREY, T (2024) The Story of Contemporary Art. Thames & Hudson. Pág. 65

^[2]Ibidem

^[3]Ibidem

BIOGRAPHY

Carla Carbone was born in Lisbon, 1971. She studied Drawing in Ar.co and Design of Equipment at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Lisbon. Completed his Masters in Visual Arts Teaching. She writes about Design since 1999, first in the newspaper O Independente, then in editions like Anuário de Design, arq.a magazine, DIF, Parq. She also participates in editions such as FRAME, Diário Digital, Wrongwrong, and in the collection of Portuguese designers, edited by the newspaper Público. She collaborated with illustrations for Fanzine Flanzine and Gerador magazine.

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