Monitor Lisbon has the pleasure to announce Alfabeto Analfabeto, the first show of the Portuguese artist duo Mariana Caló (Viana do Castelo, 1984) & Francisco Queimadela (Coimbra, 1985) at the gallery.

They began sharing and collaboration during their studies at the Fine Arts Academy in Porto and have been working as an artist duo since 2010. Their practice is developed with a privileged use of moving images, intersecting installative and site-specific environments, and also drawing, painting, photography and sculpture.

[W]hen we see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.

(Jeff VanderMeer)

For the exhibition at Monitor this artist duo developed a new body of work specifically for the gallery space. In the first room there are five paintings that present proto characters drawn with gouache over acrylic plaster and pigment, in fragmented compositions, that suggest proximity to a potencial language evoked through bones and inner shapes.

In the basement, an immersive environment was created, a space of projection and acid innerness in which all the elements are wrapped by different tones of green. From the floor of the room erupt ambiguous sculptures that evoke horns, turning the environment strange, visceral, aggressive - where at the same time a video where the image of a mortuary mask is manipulated.