For Arco Lisboa 2023, Galeria Foco is pleased to presents a duo exhibition Plants, as far as I know, are still bending towards the light by Gabriel Ribeiro and Francisco Trêpa.

Francisco Trêpa presents a series of ceramic sculptures, which builds upon a body of work started in 2022. Modeled and glazed bodies, formally undefined, appear side by side and tell us a story – without a established narrative – of possibilities and encounters. Among these creatures, the similarities are many, but none can be said to be equal to the other. Having the perception of plant growth requires a different perception of time as we know it. Recreate, replicate, sprout and open. A group of pollinators has gathered to feed on flowers, which, in turn, attract them by producing cobalt blue, copper green, honey brown pollen. Flowers have their reasons for attracting these animals, and they, in turn, cannot resist them. What do pollinators carry after feeding? What do they carry with them after they get together and go their separate ways? In any case, their transit adds something to the places they land, releasing what they unknowingly carry within themselves from the moment they feed.

This transformative or perhaps liminal tendency is also manifested in Gabriel Ribeiro’s ghostly fire-printed photograms. The images oscillate between photography and sculpture, flatness and depth, sharpness and opacity, the documental and the oniric. Upon close inspection, coiling shapes appear to be fully incandescent or conducting mysterious gases in its visible internality. The marks appear at once intentional and arbitrary, fluctuating between the random assemblages of Mikado games and the pragmatic rigor of clock hands. Rather than concealed in favour of a printed image, the materiality of the photographic paper is revealed in its full photosensitivity. It is precisely in this arena or mise-en-scene where Ribeiro manipulates his objects in pitch darkness and exposes them to the light of fire for two seconds. The resulting effect probes primitive image-making techniques or shadow-play, where images are quickly projected, before being completely dissolved in the following instant.

In a conversation that traverses matter, meaning, essence and reference, the two artists present a series of works that arise from instinct and celebrates it. as one of many pulsating forces in the universe making sure things happen.

Opening Section curated by Chus Martínez and Luiza Teixeira de Freitas.