ARTE 3+1 ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA

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Untitled (Estelar Series), 2024
Oil acrylic and spray paint on paper,
42 x 29.7 cm.
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Tiago Baptista (Portugal, 1986). The ‘Estelar’ – (Stellar) series by Tiago Baptista began in Paris during his artistic residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts at the end of 2023 and has been developed ever since. It began as a return to the practice of painting, which had been on hold for a few months, however ended up becoming a body of work that extends into the field of drawing. While there is an undeniably pictorial interest and quest, the essayistic characteristics and spatial and compositional experimentation that drawing offers are just as important, if not more so. They are also drawings, as they are works that have a diaristic, written tone, using elements that can sometimes be shells, sometimes mineral formations that are both inert terrestrial geological elements and moving ethereal stars. The sheet of paper here is seen as a board in a visual game, creating connections between figures and background, generating spaces that can be both submerged and celestial, initiating cosmological relationships, like someone playing with collections of pebbles and shells found on journeys, thus trying to find a poetic meaning in this remembrance of the primordial relationship with the cycles of the earth. The sinistrodextral reading of these works will be in dialogue with a wall mural by the artist.