João Ferro Martins
It’s painted on her shirt in capitals
3+1 Arte Contemporânea is pleased to present It’s painted on her shirt in capitals, the latest solo exhibition by João Ferro Martins (Santarém, 1979) at the gallery.
João Ferro Martins’ work is characterised by its disciplinary diversity and the use of objets trouvés. Working with painting, installation, performance and music, the artist appropriates objects or images from everyday life, sometimes personal, and gives them new meanings, translating ideas and memories into the material and concrete.
In It’s painted on her shirt in capitals the references are varied, reflecting on issues such as precariousness, ruin, classical culture, the absence of territory and the collapse of contemporary society. The works are presented in a thematic, aesthetic and cultural amalgam, almost like a Cabinet of Curiosities – rooms where wealthy individuals from the 16th and 17th century displayed their collections of unusual objects, collected from other parts of the world, often unidentified or decontextualised. It is a form of invented museology, an anthropological museum of the artist’s aesthetics, as if his work is being studied and interpreted by an outsider. Thus, the exhibition finds its logic in the absurd, not needing a solution or right answer to justify the presence of any of its components. Despite this, there is a constant search for meaning, both on the part of the artist and the observer, but in the end, the only certainty is that the works on show are a reaction to current symptoms.