Gonçalo Preto

What immediately strikes from Goncalo Preto’s production it’s how his sophisticated pictorial technique is applied to the creation of situations that are often embedded with a tense atmosphere, as parts of disconnected narratives that compose the whole visual world of the artist. Since his second solo show, Middle Finger Pedestrians, presented at the gallery in November 2019, the artist started a new series of paintings originated by the interest in the representation of dim environments, focusing on the portrayal of different light sources and on how the observer's eye adapts to the blackness of the different represented scenes. His most recent works show a development in this research about vision where the artist plays with our vision and its reaction to light, focus, proximity, abstraction and the mysterious creation scenes that seem to belong to everybody’s lost memories. ...

MADRAGOA is a contemporary art gallery founded in 2016 in the homonymous neighborhood of Lisbon’s historical center. Since its beginning, the gallery has been an early supporter of a number of international young artists such as Adrián Balseca, Rodrigo Hernández, Renato Leotta, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Joanna Piotrowska, and Yuli Yamagata, whose first productions and exhibition have been produced and promoted by the gallery and often presented for the first time in Portugal. Moreover, Madragoa launched the careers of young Portuguese artists such as Sara Chang Yan, Luís Lázaro Matos, Gonçalo Preto, and Jaime Welsh, giving them visibility on the international scene. From its peripheral location in Europe, MADRAGOA’s project focuses on how to set a deep conversation with the city and its extraordinary potential, setting a dialogue between global artistic practices and local craftsmanship and ideas. The gallery always created experiences of research and production for its artists locally and promotes its program also through the participation in a number of international art fairs, gallery exchanges, and exhibition projects. MADRAGOA is currently recognized as one of the most innovative realities in the Portuguese art scene, while it succeeded to obtain visibility internationally throughout its years of its activity. At the moment, the gallery actively represents artists from Portugal, Italy, Ecuador, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Brazil and South Africa. ...