João Freitas

João Freitas was born in Porto in 1997. He holds a degree in painting from the Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade do Porto. Alongside his artistic work, he has led charcoal drawing and oil painting workshops at the Escola Artística de Soares dos Reis.

His practice develops out of an investigation into the behaviour of colour on different surfaces and materials. In his compositions, colour takes on a structuring function, defining forms and establishing relationships of balance, tension and continuity. The encounters between tones, the overlappings and the transparencies constitute the starting point for the construction of each work.

Collage occupies a central place in this process, frequently drawing on the physical deconstruction of earlier works. The gesture of tearing the paper allows fragments to be reorganised and new compositions to be discovered, prolonging the experimentation on the basis of what has already been made. Each work thus emerges as a variation on a continued research into form and chromatic harmonies.

In the paintings, the movement of the flat brushes and palette knives remains visible. Rapid, repeated gestures sit alongside open, translucent brushstrokes, introducing different rhythms of observation. Although they develop within the field of abstraction, these images may evoke landscapes, geological formations or maritime atmospheres, through suggestions of light, fluidity and movement.

The act of painting lies at the centre of this language. Attention is directed to the action upon the surface and to the expressive possibilities of the materials, leaving room for the personal associations of the viewer. The titles, chosen with poetry and humour, add further clues for reading without fixing an interpretation.