Ana Santos at The Goma

Artist: Ana Santos

Exhibition title: Timbre

Venue: The Goma, Madrid, Spain

Date: February 3 – April 7, 2018

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and The Goma, Madrid

In her third solo show at the gallery, the Portuguese artist has once again produced a composition from the usual materials in her practice, namely plastic, textiles and wax, while also introducing the result of her work with moulds, in which, for the first time, she combines aluminium and bronze with ordinary materials taken from her everyday life.

Santos’ sculptural output is deeply rooted in the discipline of drawing. Her practice explores the production of objects and how they are deployed in space, seeking points of connection between different elements through a transformative poetic action with a minimalist formalism. The balance of the overall whole counteracts the fragility, instability and delicateness of each individual work. There is a kind of false stationary order in the circular drive of each one of her works in this exhibition, a hidden essence or vitality that activates our perception when flowing through the conduits of these bodies. The entropy of the material is the result of combining opposing materials in the artist’s work: rigid and elastic, translucent and opaque, light and heavy, whose collective fluctuations create a chromatic and formal harmony within the exhibition space.

Ana Santos (Espinho, Portugal, 1982) lives and works in Lisbon, and has a BA in Sculpture from the School of Fine Art in Porto. This year her work will be shown at Museu da Marinha and in 2019 will go on show at MAAT, both museums in Lisbon. Her work is currently on view in the exhibitions 10000 anos depois entre Vénus e Marte comprising works from Colecção Cachola and also Aquisições recentes da coleção Serralves, both in Porto. Santos was the recipient of the EDP Visual Arts Prize in 2014.