Landscapes, ornaments, and other crafts

Paisagens, ornatos e outros ofícios

David Almeida

10.09 > 10.10.2026

In co-operation with Projeto Fidalga / Residência Paulo Reis Artistic Creation Residency

Sem olhar a quem¹

Thoughts on painting from the works of David Almeida

It takes faith to cut one's nails, to care for teeth like borrowed goods. The invisible bill collector knocks at the door. I don't sleep, and neither does he. It must be love that keeps us joined in this underside of mysticism. Out of a poor person's pride I take the dim light as enough and prefer the vigil over having rest.

Adélia Prado

In his letters to his friend and poet Joachim Gasquet, Cezanne once said: “There are three basic principles in art, [...] scrupulousness, sincerity, submission. Scrupulousness about ideas, sincerity to oneself, submission to the object.” When I first read this quote, it became the spark necessary for me to write about David’s work for the first time, years ago. I sense in his artistic practice those three categories. I see David working as a dynamo, he hops from one piece to the other, letting himself be carried away by the movement of an evening or night at the studio. He starts, and with this momentum he is carried simultaneously by and through the work itself, as if he had the clear notion that one should not resist to the rhythm dictated by the labour. In some kind of feedback, he generously gives the work his energy, and painting gives him something back.

Painting is a humbling practice. It is a property of painting. As a medium, it is constantly reminding the painter of his own ignorance and lack of control. Painting is, in a way, learning to deal with failure, with the unexpected... with the unwanted. It is a lot about learning to accept and to not accept, it is an exercise of decision-making. It is something like taking a trip all the way from Brazil to Fatima and spending hours painting ex-votus for no one. Managing, through that experience, be reminded that painting was never for anyone in particular, not even for oneself. Deciding then to enjoy this time by being present, by praising painting as something that is directed towards the world.

Of course there is a fraction of the craft that serves the painting himself, but only within the boundaries of the active transformation the artist goes through while he works. The other fraction, the painting itself, serves the world. The object, the painting, is after all, of the world. One of the aspects that transform the result of the practice into a pictoric object is that it is, not marginally, now in the world.

Looking through these lenses we can find in painting a paradoxical purpose: painting serves the other, it is made for the other, while simultaneously being a wandering object that doesn’t know which purpose it serves, only that it does. Painting might be a leap of faith. It is necessary to believe in the other to paint. It is necessary to believe that this task, this work will reach its final destination: the eyes of the other. And that there it will fulfill its function, whatever it may be.

David’s body of work is also inevitably permeated by his own nature. By who he is, by the history that gave him a way of operating in the world. It is permeated by his experiences in the satellite-city² where he was raised, by his contact with Brazil's capital, mediated by the distance from his home and his origin. It is affected by the clear notion David has of how much it matters to pay attention to the history that came before him. Painting, as Richter (the younger one) once said, will always be like the act of squeezing out the foam that is absorbed by our eyes and bodies, acting like sponges, while in contact with the world. That absorption and contact are mediated by the interests, affinities and denials of the artist.

For a good bunch of the last decades, from Vale do Jequitinhonha to the outskirts of Goiás, in the brazilian cerrado, it was possible (and probable) to hear the name of a very interesting figure: Dércio Marques, a great singer and guitarist. The truth is that Dércio was much more than a musician, he was also an active researcher of Brazilian music traditions. A wandering minstrel that used to seek to understand, explore, discover and coexist with his pairs, to genuinely live the places he passed by. He also understood that Brazilian culture needed an active fighting force to maintain its folk traditions alive. Without warriors who fight to keep things going, they may be lost to time, Dércio knew that. With a relentless respect for tradition, a generous care for the generations to come and a clear notion that Brazilian heritage was also Portuguese, African, Indigenous, it is Latin, mixed, and exactly because of that, precious. Dércio maintained a fresh perspective without forgetting about the uttermost importance to keep fighting for the continuation of something that came before him, that passed through him, and that now lives after him. David reminds me of Dércio, or vice-versa.

Heron do Prado Nogueira Lisbon, 2026.

¹ The title was not translated because it is part of a proverb in the Portuguese language.

² The cities on the outskirts of Distrito Federal, the state in which Brasília is located, are called satellite-cities, in reference to the fact that they “orbit” the capital of Brazil.