‘Os Horizontes do Reverso do Mundo’ exhibition view, Espaço Mira, 2023
Photos courtesy of Espaço Mira | ©Tiago Lobato

Diogo Nogueira and Raul Macedo present “Os Horizontes do reverso do Mundo”, in an exhibition that divides space while expanding it.

These two young artists have explored multiple media, including painting, ceramics, video and photography, probably in an almost generational pulse: to say that very young artists bring with them a great desire for experimentation.

There is something in common between the two, given that they are interested in investigating the field of the private, the insertion of personal life into artistic production, from a point of view in which this personal field can be confused with a fictional side or a self-mythology – to use Diogo Nogueira’s words – and vice versa. If, on the one hand, Nogueira paints large-scale panels in which he refers to themes that he himself calls the classic themes of painting, such as hunting, Henri Matisse’s dance, bathing and bacchanalia, on the other hand, Macedo’s video is more direct. It intimidates us because of the size of the bodies and the realism of those bodies. The pieces presented by Raul Macedo, both remind us of the rawness of Nan Goldin’s images, in a self-representation of her time, and take us back to Wolfgang Tillmans, in his series dedicated to the bohemian nightlife, its spoils, the memories of the bodies that were there, and the objects that reflect that experience.

We feel a very strong connection in the way they approach light, shadow and the framing that seem accidental, but which are not, and leave nothing to chance.

There is, in fact, a very powerful mise-en-scéne, which in Raúl Macedo’s case makes us hold our breath, and in Diogo Nogueira’s case almost goes unnoticed. This exhibition presents itself today as yet another way of approaching the theme of freedom – something you can feel for sure in José Maia’s curated works at Espaço Mira – in the potential of being free, in a society where there are more and more petitions to remove works of art considered “offensive”. We continue to resist.

 Joana Mendonça, 2023

‘Os Horizontes do Reverso do Mundo’ exhibition view, Espaço Mira, 2023
photos courtesy of Espaço Mira | ©Tiago Lobato

‘Os Horizontes do Reverso do Mundo’ exhibition view, Espaço Mira, 2023
photos courtesy of Espaço Mira | ©Tiago Lobato

Inauguration Archive

‘Os Horizontes do Reverso do Mundo’ Inauguration, Espaço Mira, 2023
photos courtesy of Espaço Mira | ©Tiago Lobato

Interview

‘Os Horizontes do Reverso do Mundo’ Interview with Diogo Nogueira and Raul Macedo, Espaço Mira, 2023
video courtesy of Espaço Mira | ©Tiago Lobato

Exhibition produced during the support program ‘Young High Artistic Talent 2023,’ a program run by the Maia City Council