Galeria Rui Freire – Fine Art presents "The Tea Master", a group exhibition bringing together eleven artists whose practices critically interrogate painting, drawing, sculpture, and the experience of space.
BJARNE MELGAARD, BRUNO CASTRO SANTOS, DONNA HUANCA, HEIMO ZOBERNIG, JOSH SPERLING, LEENA NIO, MELIKE KARA, PEDRO QUINTAS, ROBERT JANITZ, RUI MATOS, HANNS SCHIMANSKY
Conceived as a field of resonances rather than a thematic statement, the exhibition proposes a reflection on how contemporary artists continue to negotiate abstraction, materiality, and perception through distinct yet deeply interconnected approaches.
Spanning generations and geographies, the gathered artists share a rigorous attention to process, gesture, and the physical presence of the work. Painting emerges not as a stable category, but as a mutable condition—expanded in space, redefined by scale, or activated by time, repetition, and the engagement of the body. Drawing transcends the two-dimensional plane, sculpture approaches the logic of the line, and color asserts itself as atmosphere rather than mere surface.
The exhibition articulates a fluid journey through abstraction as a lived experience: starting with the tactile materiality of Robert Janitz, moving toward the stratified pictorial fields of Leena Nio and the work of Melike Kara, which intersects painting and collage through fragmentation and memory. Painting expands into space with Josh Sperling, who redefines it sculpturally, and with Hanns Schimansky, who extends drawing into spatial systems. Between gesture and time, the meditative constructions of Bruno Castro Santos emerge alongside the radical gestural intensity of Bjarne Melgaard, while Donna Huanca introduces the body as surface and archive. Heimo Zobernig critically revisits the codes of Modernism through ambiguity, Pedro Quintas constructs images in suspension, and Rui Matos concludes the path by transforming sculpture into three-dimensional drawing.
Far from proposing a unified narrative, "The Tea Master" affirms coexistence: an exhibition where each artistic position preserves its autonomy while contributing to a broader reflection on contemporary visual language within the cosmopolitan context of Lisbon.
