Galeria das Salgadeiras resumes the initiative “Fora de Portas” (“Outside Its Doors”), presenting Marta Ubach’s work in Funchal for the first time, in partnership with Teatro Municipal Baltazar Dias.
Recalling Father António Vieira, “slowly and in time,” so that the soul is not left behind, this exhibition by Marta Ubach is something of a call to pause, to suspend time and space. Alice’s rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, always running because he has no time, would grow exasperated with the stillness that reigns in Marta Ubach’s chromatic palette. From afar, we may perceive diffuse colors in harmony with a certain state of mind and, whether it exists or whatever it may be, with the soul that the artist seeks to evoke in each belief or religion. Yet, as we move closer and engage in dialogue with these recent works, we encounter a composition that transports us into Marta Ubach’s distinctive universe, where painting and drawing merge and dissolve in a happy cross-contamination: we have color, always at the core of “painting-painting”, and the stroke, the line, the contour that emphasizes the “object” of the canvas. As always, it is hoped that each viewer will find their own narrative, whether or not guided by the clues suggested by the titles.
From early on, in 1998 when she began her artistic practice, Marta Ubach’s figuration has manifested a strong expressionist character and a deeply personal voice. Now, in “Devagar” (“Slowly”), it appears with a serenity that, though it may seem paradoxical, is not, crying out: “slow down and notice,” in an appropriation of Buddhist thought. These are representations of everyday scenes enveloped in a white mist that, however, does not prevent us from seeing and feeling, not what the artist intends to say, but rather what we may wish to discover.
To conclude with whom we began, the one whom Fernando Pessoa called the Emperor of the Portuguese Language, in the capital letters he deserves: “It is better to live at a walking pace than to end in flight.”
