Solar - Cinematic Art Gallery is presenting “nothing stays the same” by artist João Gabriel, an exhibition that moves away from the gallery's usual video projection devices and includes a series of new large oil paintings.

João Gabriel's relationship with Solar dates back to 2016, when he exhibited a series of smaller, cinematically inspired paintings on paper as part of the CAVE project.

His artistic practice is not only informed by photography, cinema and memory. An integral part of her inspiration are underground queer pornographic films from the 70s and 80s, a time marked by moments of extreme sexual freedom (and liberation) among members of the queer community that ended abruptly with the outbreak of the HIV pandemic. This enormous trauma, which affected subsequent generations, established a correlation between sexuality and death, a loss underlined in Gabriel's paintings, about representations of desire and innocence, since “nothing remained the same”.

For Solar, the artist is presenting a selection of very recent oil paintings on canvas - most of them large - and on paper, in which isolation and togetherness appear in displays of affection. The works oscillate between these spaces: public and private, interior and exterior, nature and domesticity, observing and being observed, painting and cinema. On natural landscapes, represented almost in an impressionist manner, João Gabriel incorporates movement and figuration, revealing the seductive presence of human bodies in a series of expectant situations.

In this way, the public is invited to share these intimate moments, almost like a voyeur, thus creating a narrative space, in a journey that is also one of reflection and affirmation of the right to visibility of identities that, for too long, have been systematically obliterated.

The inauguration will take place on November 30, at 5pm, with the presence of the artists João Gabriel and Joana Hintze (a guest artist for the CAVE project). The event will be accompanied by an open bar, sponsored by DCN Beers, and a DJ set.