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Ana Manso
RAR Collection 2020

Ana Manso is one of the protagonists of the most recent Portuguese art who has this privilege: gliding over the landscape of the history of painting to extract methods and experiences that can then be translated into singular objects. As in poetry, the way that elements are articulated, the spaces between them, the intuited breathing, rhythm and polysemy are vital conditions for works that share a common grammar.
Whereas in her vertical paintings the chosen format (a type of network that the artist discovered to depict the refining process at the sugar factory) determines the appearance of the image as an organic overlay, in which the previous mesh is still visible, in the drawings the space is filled in an outburst of colour and movement of natural and landscape-based suggestion.
The exercise, in both cases, is determined by procedural evidence, in which the artist's gestures alternate and overlap with her evident intentionality. We will never know whether this is essentially calculated or is spontaneous: but I like to imagine the artist's own sense of surprise when she completes her work. This has, in fact, been one of the great themes of painting, when does an author complete his or her work?

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