Luísa Jacinto lives and works in Lisbon. Jacinto's artistic practice deals with the protocols of the image, narratives fragmentation and simulation, the excess of evidence and obscuration. Of special note among her solo exhibitions are The idea of returning, Galeria Quadrado Azul, Lisboa, Portugal, 2022; Stone-Veil, Artworks, Lisbon, Portugal, 2019, We had the experience but missed the meaning, galería silvestre, Madrid, Spain, curated by Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues, 2018; A single day is enough, curated by João Miguel Fernandes Jorge, Museu Carlos Machado, Azores, Portugal, 2012. Of special note among her collective exhibitions are It's the scenery that moves (duo exhibition with Isa Melsheimer) Brotéria, Lisbon, Portugal, 2022; Painting, Observation Field, curated by João Pinharanda, Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Portugal, 2021; PADA, ASC Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 2019; WAIT, curated by Orlando Franco, Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisboa, Portugal 2019; Saudade - Unmemorable Place in Time, curated by Yuko Hasegawa, Fosun Foundation, Shanghai, China and Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal, 2018; Pontos Colaterais, Coleção de Arte Arquipélago, uma seleção, curated by João Silvério, Arquipélago, S. Miguel, Azores, Portugal, 2015.
"There was a moment," Luísa Jacinto says, "when I understood that I didn't just want to make beautiful surfaces, but to face vertigo, an accident. It's like a distancing game where I try not to give everything at first. There is a certain risk, but also a certain reckoning”.
(...) The title she chose is absolutely appropriate! Véu-pedra (Stone-Veil), with a hyphen, it is a play-on-words, rubbing together, an enigma spoken through the mouth of a sphinx. What really matters here is not exactly interpreting whether the veil is made of stone, whether the stone is like a veil that conceals. All that matters is the image, the thick evanescence of a metaphor. It is also a title which stresses the cognitive magnitude of materials, where colour and texture withhold the artist's gesture becoming independent forms of existence.
Luísa Jacinto’s projecting of the entire exhibition in an ambivalent way, as the title suggests, makes perfect sense, because it is the very practice of painting that she seeks to stress. The metal plates were worked on as if canvasses: first "attacked", then painted, and afterwards straightened by powerful calender and bending machines as basis for consecutive pictorial interventions ("It's a lot of torture for a metal plate", she recalls in an interview). Still, what we call "painting" is, strictly speaking, an alchemy of pigment work (cadmium, iridescence, brown, cobalt), something betwixt spraying and decanting.
