Igor Jesus’ large-format Animistic Glass (2024) engages two parallel reads: a commentary on liquidity both in the photographic process and as a metaphor for contemporary modernity, and, as evoked in the title, magical realism and animist materialism as an alternative viewpoint on reality. The camera, equipped with artisanal, manufactured lenses — in which the cone of light is sculpted before it sensitizes the film — converts the (perception of) solid objects into liquids. The undulating shapes that travel from one side of the sheet of photographic images to the other make the objects represented in the images seem to be in a sort of liquid state. This liquidity reflects Zygmunt Bauman’s metaphor for modernity in contemporary society. It also evokes the animist logic enunciated by Henry Garuba. According to Garuba, magical realism is an attempt to capture reality through a multidimensional vision of the world that can grasp both its visible and invisible parts. Animistic Glass grants us access to an alternative cosmography to those that we systematically validate as the real and the truth. It invites us to adopt a more flexible approach, closer to a liquid way, which might be a more apt course of action to understand a world in constant transformation.

Jesus has exhibited at Escola das Artes, Porto, Rialto6, Lisbon, Capela Carlos Alberto, Porto, Kunstraum Botschaft, Berlin, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, the EDP foundation and elsewhere. His works are held in public collections, such as the António Cachola Collection, The Fernanda Ribeiro Collection, The EDP Foundation Collection, The Norlinda and José Lima Collection, TFRA-Teixeira de Freitas e Associados, Lisbon, Portugal; among other private collections in Portugal, Spain, Belgium, The Netherlands and Brazil.

Galeria Francisco Fino began presenting exhibitions in different cultural spaces in the city of Lisbon in 2012. Operating in different spaces – museological institutions and commercial establishments – the gallery presented itself, in the early years, in a nomadic format, in line with the dynamic of mobility of the contemporary art system. Among others, the mobile gallery presents exhibitions of artists such as Fernanda Gomes, David Maljković, and Tris Vonna-Michell. In 2017, Galeria Francisco Fino settled into a permanent location, while continuing to position itself within the full breadth of cultural geography through partnerships and links with diverse institutions and events that form the artistic network. Galeria Francisco Fino is a space of dialogue between artists, curators and other agents in the artistic field, committed to aesthetics and contemporary cultural cartography.