THE ALCHEMY OF FORMS AND COLORS
ATOMS, SPIRALS, STRANDS OF DNA, oceans of fluids and spatial diagrams, forms taken from science or esoteric disciplines, strokes that carry distant meanings and hidden symbols populate the pictorial universe of Luís Geraldes.
Far, however, from the inevitable coldness of unchanging phenomena or eternal theses, the work of this painter — who has lived in Australia for 20 years — explodes with color and the vibrations of physicality. If metaphysics is what it is — what lies beyond the physical — such a word would only approximately define his work. There is no separation. And spirituality does not oppose knowledge. Science, religion, and art are not isolated domains, much less contradictory ones. Using painting as a metaphor for inner and outer knowledge, Geraldes embodies the current dilemma of visual artists (and many others): giving form to portals that we attempt to open. Just as ancient secret orders and initiatic societies once sought (and transformed) themselves, so too the alchemy of these works — seemingly disparate in nature, especially DNA Chains and The Cosmogonic Cycle, which were exhibited at the Chiado Museum — becomes both image and antithesis of mystical exaltations. It is like a “fusion nage” of the layers of matter and spirit.
The experience of diverse cultures must also be considered, as it surfaces in the paintings. Geraldes spent his childhood in Angola, where he later fled the war. That experience is already imprinted in his earliest works, the result of a vocation confirmed by his degree at IADE. When he left for Australia, his initial plan was to travel first to South Africa — but the country’s political climate was unfavorable, and since at the time the Australian embassy was less stringent, his dream shifted. What had “died” at the airport returned to life at the top of his canvases.
There is an exegetical dimension in the work of Luís Geraldes that deserves attention: the history of science and its (failed) attempts to model reality, models that are constantly shifting and dissolving the constraints of science/reason. The artist appropriates some of these polemical themes and reconstructs them for exhibitions, lectures, and performances — presented as far afield as Buenos Aires, Santiago, and New York.
The beauty of the colors — the “energy of color” — and the enigma of the forms give these works a dimension of imagination and a need “to be touched.” The “slap of light” they express may not only be an artistic metaphor; perhaps it is a symbolic metaphor for how we should face the universe around us and ourselves — in all that is invisible within us. In this nebulous space, where the artist’s obsessions are inscribed, might that be where we belong?