ANTÓNIO DOMINGOS – aesthetic operator of the rectangle

 

António Domingos' painting struggles between the instinct of form and form dominated by geometry. The former remains alive, close to the impulsive movement of nature. The latter corresponds to the need to find a certain order, regulated by the rule that corrects emotion and also by the emotion that corrects the rule, according to the enlightening words of the notable Cubist painter Georges Braque.

It is in the attempt to resolve this complementarity of aspects, involving emotion and rule, that António Domingos' painting acquires relevant meaning, in the construction of a sequence of paintings, which are organised in relation to each other, without losing their respective expressive autonomy.

A. Domingos' painting starts from an elementary evidence: the two basic directions on which the constructive spirit of man is based: the vertical and the horizontal and the consequent notion of right angle. Hence the need to define the painting as a rectangular surface, in whose orthogonal and symmetrical structure the composition acquires maximum stability, solidity and harmony.
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The painter contrasts the rigid, impersonal and minimalist geometric structure with the human mark of spontaneous and informal gestures which, meticulous and obsessive, invade the rectangular areas, partially diluted in light and shadow, creating a fluidity of textural and transparent colour that negates the initial two-dimensional opacity in favour of suggestion, in chiaroscuro and in trompe l'oeil, of the third dimension, in depth and relief, beyond the frontal plane of the support. Between the dense darkness of blue-black and the subtle clarity of bluish grey, the painter's austere palette of cool tones creates a gradation of luminous values.
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The chiaroscuro brings A. Domingos' painting closer to the evocation of nature, or makes it coincide with the memory of the texture of old walls, rectangular walls and doors, on whose insurmountable opacity the light falls and highlights the tactility of the material. The wall exists and resists as a support furrowed with visual and tactile inscriptions, as in the informalist painting of António Tápies.
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By seeking to reconcile opposites, the geometric and the informal, the rational and the irrational, the conscious and the unconscious, Apollo and Dionysus, António Domingos' painting is sensitive to Universal Harmony. The work is viewed as a whole. The globalising vision perceives the sublime as something that transcends us and makes us believe in the relationship between the natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine, the finite and the infinite, the visible and the invisible.

Starting from the zero degree of knowledge, each person runs the risk of their own poetic and philosophical adventure.

 

EURICO GONÇALVES, April 2004