Wind, water, mountain. Perhaps even fire. Air, plenty of air, spaces becoming open, free from the representation of the visible world. It is, then, from the realm of the invisible, the dream, that their meaning – or rather, their meanings – emerge. They are interpretations of those places composing Teresa Gonçalves Lobo’s imagined cartography, a whole atlas, awaiting a new existence in each and every one of her exhibitions. We might need to close our eyes to see them come to life. The lines, invariably upwards, often overlapping, highlighting the symbolism of the gesture, conjuring hill tops, a swallow’s flight that, despite not being Spring, nevertheless bears in it the spirit of Springtime; cane crops thriving in the fields, most likely sugarcane, as Madeira is in the artist’s roots; wind blowing across the landscape. The lines, Teresa Gonçalves Lobo’s extensive lexicon, speak about lightness, a weightlessness that overcomes us when we close our eyes. They come from the lightness of Dream, the same Dream that “drives life.”
Ana Matos
September 2018