Carlos Noronha Feio
at the end of it all there’s the beginning, the negotiation!

3+1 Arte Contemporânea opens in June 2021 no fim de tudo está o começo, a negociação! (at the end of it all there’s the beginning, the negotiation!), the latest solo show by Carlos Noronha Feio at the gallery.

Carlos Noronha Feio’s artistic practice spans through various mediums and supports – painting, sculpture, video, installation, tapestry, and drawing – having as groundwork philosophical inquiries into themes such as identity, nationalism, local and global culture, dispositifs and the construction of meaning. His body of work is distinctively developed in a rhizomatic structure, whereby different series of research and work seek to defend and establish the bigger picture in lieu of an immediate coherence or chronological brevity. Noronha Feio’s series look to be expansive, creating points of connection between them, juxtapositions, revisitations.

Within this framework emerge in the exhibition at the end of it all there’s the beginning, the negotiation!, his most recent paintings and sculptures, with curatorial text by Alistair Hicks. Backtracking to series of paintings from 2015 until now, the artist has been delving into formal matters such as the notion of dispositif and of strategies of image construction through composition building via marks and strokes. These paintings, at last unconfined from the frame and the photographic image unlike their predecessors, expand outside of the canvas through sculptural elements – glass, neon lights and metal sculptures – that shift them from the two-dimensional plane into a three-dimensional space. With this solo exhibition, Noronha Feio broadens his research on the construction of ideas and visual signification, additionally presenting a parallel exhibition titled o peculiar é um detalhe no todo comum at Quarto 22, Colégio das Artes (University of Coimbra) in Coimbra.

Carlos Noronha Feio (Lisbon, 1981) lives and works in Oeiras and Moscow. He holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, London. Noronha Feio’s selected solo shows include: o peculiar é um detalhe no todo comum, Q22, Colégio das Artes, Coimbra (2021);  Zero/Zero, (with Délio Jasse) Galeria Municipal de Almada, Lisbon (2019);(sunsight!)/(sunclipse!), 3+1 Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon (2019); even if at heart we are uncertain of the will to connect, there is a common future ahead, Narrative projects, London (2018); A Matter of Trust, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2017); banhados pela luz brilhante do pôr do sol, 3+1 Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon (2015); and Oikonomia: A Matter of Trust, MNAC – Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea do Chiado, Lisbon (2015). Group shows: Dissonâncias, MNAC, Lisbon (2020); Sonho Europeu: Obras da Coleção Norlinda e José Lima, Centro de Cultura Contemporânea de Castelo Branco (2019); The fabric of felicity, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2018); Variations Portugaises, Centre d’Art Contemporain de Meymac (2018); ‘Futures’, CAC Vilnius (2017); You Are Now Entering_________, CCA Londonderry/Derry (2012); and Image Wars, Abrons Art Centre, New York (2011). From 2009 up to 2014 he was a director of The Mews Project Space in London’s east end. Noronha Feio’s work is included in the publications “The Art of Not Making: The New Artist/Artisan Relationship” as well as in “Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life Tradition”, published by Thames & Hudson. He is present in several collections including: MAAT – Fundação de Arte EDP, Portugal; Coleção Norlinda e José Lima, Portugal; Saatchi Collection, UK; Fundação PLMJ, Portugal; MNAC – Museu do Chiado, Portugal; MAR – Museu de Arte do Rio, Brazil; amongst other national and international private and public collections.