FRANCISCO MENDES MOREIRA

Francisco Mendes Moreira’s first Solo exhibition at our gallery will feature large and medium format paintings, artworks on paper and sculptures showing the artist’s broad artistic approach. The works for this show were done during the summer of 2022, through old roads and new tracks. This could serve as a reference map of the different echoes in them.

Ring ring 7am.
I get up when I want
except on Wednesdays.
Drinking brew for breakfast.
And look at the time,
almost beer-thirty.
Sick boy, Renton,
Apollo, Dionysus,
and the evil Doctor Eggman.

I can’t remember anything.
The real deal one trick pony.
Things in my pockets,
tricks up my sleeve.
Cosmos, the pale blue dot,
Toshirō Mifune.
The fourth wise man, the fifth beatle,
The night of Santiago.

Black Captain, pony express.
Blue bayou. Paris, Texas.
Harry Dean Stanton.
1991 Seat Toledo
Homemade road movie.
Riding with hunchbacked children
and humpback whales.
Another way to be mean.
Mean
Chico
not Steve McQueen.

Larry Bird.
Kublai Khan.
Francesco Petrarca.
Doo-wop in Harlem.
Pony goes to town.

–Francisco Mendes Moreira

Self-taught artist Francisco Mendes Moreira (1979) lives and works in Lisbon. Working with repurposed materials and different techniques, mostly oil paint, oil pastels, wood, collage, and paper maché, Moreira’s images pose those eternal questions; where did we come from, what came before us and who else is out there?

Alternating between realism and abstract, he depicts through vivid colours, textures, and a unique imagery his vision of the world and how he navigates within it. Influences like western movies have shaped the way the artist perceives and reckons with life’s junctions. Whether figurative or abstract patterns, his works allow the onlooker to embark on an adventurous journey, exploring the human condition and immersing oneself in a pictorial cosmos. Initially, the artist’s practice is a way of solving problems that are based on an intuitive working process, which can be triggered by contemporary culture, endorsing psychological and political aspects. His series are predominantly made with oil pastels, painted on found and glued cardboard packaging. Through different media and surfaces, the number of subjects and even the scale are all circumstantial, in the sense that it is his everyday life that determines the studio processes.

The act of analysis has little place in the specific creative process, but looking at the artist’s works, one can conclude that Moreiras’ practice is a continuous commentary and staging of events related to the human condition.

In recent years, Moreira has gained notoriety in the art scene exhibiting internationally in Europe, North America and Australia.