Meia Meia
Jun 27 - Sep 13 2025
- 69 days left
On Friday, June 27th, Kubikgallery opens the exhibition “Meia Meia”, featuring new works by artists Manuella Silveira (São Paulo, 1999) and Vasco Futscher (Lisbon, 1987). Manuella Silveira presents oil paintings in varied formats—some measuring only thirty centimeters, others stretching up to three meters—produced in recent months during her artist residency at Kubikgallery Lisboa. “Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Philip Guston, who’s an important reference for me,” the artist shares. “He says that when a painting is finished, it’s as if he recognizes or rediscovers an image that previously existed only in his thoughts—and then, through the body of the oily matter, everything becomes different: wavy, pulled, stretched.” She adds, “I’ve been using pink a lot, which is something characteristic of his work.” The titles of her works—Kickback, Arm Wrestling, Layer Hen, Cake Tester, and Runaway—are suggestive, but the images do not aim to illustrate specific narratives. Instead, they seek to build a theatrical atmosphere, inviting various interpretative paths. “Theatre interests me both literally and symbolically. Literally, because I often build a kind of curtain in my paintings that separates the body of the painting from the body of the world. And symbolically, because I believe the act of painting in the studio, even though solitary, has a performative dimension. The movement of the body and the energy of the moment are transferred into the painting—especially in large-scale works.” Vasco Futscher, in turn, presents a new series of ceramic pieces that continue the research shown in his 2024 solo exhibition at Ar.Co Centro de Arte. However, the horizontal lines used in that series have now been replaced with vertical and grid-like arrangements. The works make use of repetitive elements borrowed from construction—such as bricks or pipes—which are recontextualized within the gallery space. “Every day, on the way to the studio, I walk along Avenida Almirante Reis. Modernist architecture has always fascinated me. The urban fabric comes to life through the rhythm of buildings, forming the avenue’s structure. And within each building, again, the repetition of simple elements—balconies, cobogós—creates immense richness,” says the artist. “But in my work, the rigidity of modernism is replaced by the raw nature of clay, as if it were a bastardized version of those strict principles.” Decorative arts are also of interest to the artist—especially the historical role of cornices and baseboards in art. His modular _building block_-like forms, reminiscent of bricks, evoke both empty buildings and abstract totems, sparking reflection on the duality between functionality and aesthetic expression.
