RUI MOREIRA

Porto, Portugal, 1971

Presented by GALERIE JEANNE BUCHER JAEGER

Rui Moreira’s work draws inspiration from his travels, and the destinations are chosen with great care. The artist experiences both physical and psychological changes inherent in the territories he visits: overwhelming heat of the desert, blinding light of the sun, freezing temperatures in the mountains where the Ganges spring, extreme humidity of the Amazonian jungle, solitude and almost absolute silence… Upon his return he draws without interruption, executing a sort of mnemonic exercise in re-living the natural cycle of each space, from dawn to dusk, in order to feel all its nuances. This intense feeling is at the heart of the structure of Moreira’s drawings.
His drawings are also nourished by cinematographic references to Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, Herzog, Syberberg or Kubrick; or musical references, from Bach and Stockhausen to traditional Indian, Japanese, Portuguese or Arabic music; or again striking artistic references such as a fresco of Piero della Francesca. The works result from repeating a simple action: the artist patiently, at length and tirelessly fills the entire space of his drawings until his body is exhausted from excessive conditions of immobility and gravity like an intense memorial meditation.