Descripción de la Exposición
Jessica Backhaus’ second solo exhibition in Portugal features pieces from three new series: Confinement in Berlin, Far Away but Close and Cut Outs.
In “Dialogue on the New Plastic” (originally published in De Stijl, Leiden, February and March 1919), Piet Mondrian describes his earlier works as an attempt to “express relationships plastically through oppositions of colour and line”, thus allowing “colour and line to speak for themselves”. According to the artist, “the emotion of beauty is cosmic, is universal”. Even though Mondrian’s paintings may suggest a near-aseptic approach and a path of thorough purification towards reality, they nonetheless belong in the realm of spirituality and expressiveness, being emotion-driven. Hence, even though the reference to Mondrian may appear to conflict with the poetic naturalness of Jessica Backhaus’ works, the compositions of both artists are marked by a reduction to a minimum that causes their works to generate an intense energy through the dynamics of simple things. Just like Mondrian, Backhaus preserves the deepest emotions of the visual elements: light, shadow, colour and volume, expressing them and giving them a new condition. She amplifies a microcosm to extract from it a universe of details and sensorial experiences, capturing the corporeality of objects in constant change, isolating and revealing the language of visuality.