Aqui mesmo onde me encontro
[Right here where I find myself]
Ana Rey
Curated by Isabel Villalba
Opening: 06/08
Exhibition period: from 08/09 to 09/03/2022
Nor east,
nor west,
nor north,
nor south
right here where I am*
As a verse to be interpreted, Ana Rey’s work reminds me of a strong connection to haiku: a poem of Japanese origin that is characterized by conciseness and brevity. The wandering poets, in a clear and simple way, created poetry without artifice: with just three verses they managed to manifest themselves through remote times and do so until today.
Paintings, drawings and watercolors on various scales, as well as some objects that refer to the natural world, are found in the same space. All this, the result of a mental elaboration that operates to simplify a refined perception of the natural world, of the urban and linguistic context.
Ana eliminates the excesses, remaining only the essentials. The appeal to the sensorial, to poetry, to light, to psychic states, to color, are constant in her works. At the same time, it instigates and promotes a dive into the enigma of abstraction, without stridencies, inviting you to let yourself flow between squares, circles, rectangles, ellipses.
According to the artist, the work takes place in the “curious space of the studio”, as she describes in one of her texts. Nor do they escape their research, the search for solutions on issues facing humans and non-humans, the threatened environment and the difficulties of survival on our planet. All of this integrated into her research universe, which is beginning to unfold and manifest itself in the most organic ways.
The exhibition offers an active perceptual journey between the empty and full spaces of the canvas expanding throughout the exhibition. With a rational and meticulous elaboration, in essence, the surroundings converge with the field of haiku poetry that invites us to leave the immediacy, expand our field of vision, demanding a state of presence that borders on meditation.
Isabel Villalba
*extracted from the book Cotton Clouds by Abbas Kiarostami
Translation by Pedro Fonseca
