RUI MIGUEL LEITAO FERREIRA

Each lake is unique. But each lake always resembles other lakes to the extent that we may remember, evoke, or even confuse them. A lake is a limited portion of water which, unlike the sea, frequently ends before the horizon, reachable by our gaze and therefore generating the false confidence of knowing it. Waters trapped by plane margins or slopes, green or dry; turbid or simply dark waters; motionless or not very agitated waters; mysterious waters whose strangeness contaminates those who live nearby or simply come close to it.

We know what Rui Miguel Leitão Ferreira’s lake is, but knowing its name, size, location and surroundings is only important up to a certain point. And that point is beyond what we need to know to understand and love the paintings which resulted from it. More than being a specific lake, what matters is its condition as a lake—a kind of hortus conclusus, the enclosed, delimited garden evoked in the Song of Songs, a microcosm inseparable from the medieval utopia ofthe convent or monastery as a territory of perfection.

In his new lake paintings Rui Miguel Leitão Ferreira weaves visual events, in a determined space and in an indeterminate time. Without real existence, they are strange constructions and reconstructions of memory, amalgams of bodies, objects, clothes, and props which have never been together, in this place or anywhere else. Unless through his imagination, put at the service of the transformation of the mnemonic records obtained during his short life at that lake.

One thing seems certain, the irruption of his body in this space is the connecting thread of the different visual events. A body which almost always appears naked and which, in this way, offers itself to the gaze, that is, to the attention, curiosity and, above all, desire (or repulsion) of the observer. (from the text A lake, several lakes, all lakes by Victor dos Reis)

Rui Miguel Leitão Ferreira was born in 1977 in Lisbon, he lives and works in Lisbon;In 2012, Rui Miguel Leitão Ferreira got an MA in Fine Arts, at Goldsmiths University of London, and in 2005 a BA in painting, at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon.His latest exhibitions include the MU.SA (Sintra Museum of Arts), 2021, Galeria 111, 2020(solo), Low Gallery, Kondres, UK (2019), AIR-Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna, Austria (2019), in2023 his works will be exhibited at the Mind Set Art Center, Taipei City, Taiwan and The Sunday Painter Gallery, London. His works are in many public collections, such as Yuan Art Collection, Switzerland; PLMJ,Portugal; AIP - Associação Industrial Portuguesa, Portugal; Fidelidade Seguros, Portugal; Re- Mútua del Carme - Granollers, Spain; CAMB - Oeiras, Portugal; Colección Navacerrada, Spain.