Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by José Loureiro. For this solo exhibition at the Gallery, the artist will be exhibiting nine new paintings.

For more than a decade, José Loureiro has given preference to the pursuit of a rigorous pictorial strategy, which modifies the aesthetic of pure form, in this instance of the grid, with an element of imprecision and uncertainty, a hesitancy or reverberation of the line, which appears blurred, fuzzy, somehow unfinished or flawed, disappearing or receding, or ghostly emerging, depending on one’s perspective. This indefiniteness, this optical scintillation provided by the artist’s loose touch, charges the painting with an emotion and an engaging painterly energy.

Loureiro occupies himself intensely with the material substratum of the picture – the impressive range of greys in these new works, the paint surface, forms and general structure of the grid do not sit tightly, stably composed according to hierarchy, but are rather animated, disruptive and spreading. In this exhibition, the artist has also strived to provide his viewers with large canvases, which are devoid of any single, prime vantage point, hinting to expansion out of the frame. The sheer size of some of these works, their monumentality, makes the relationship between the painting and the viewer one that is highly enveloping, experiential and rewarding. ND