All artworks by Malu Ribeiro
THE BOWLER HAT TRILOGY+1 & BOHEMIAN NARRATIVES - Magical Realism (2018-2020) • 18 artworks
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Shifting gears in the last year and a half, Malu has been taking her skills and passion for color, light,[...]
Shifting gears in the last year and a half, Malu has been taking her skills and passion for color, light, and textures, perspectival and anatomical distortions, and cubism, to explore the characters she sees in her home (Europe) away from home (US). She brings a more contemporary touch to old themes, with elements of outsider art still playing with the issues of flatness versus spatial relationships in visual expression. Nostalgic for previous eras, even some which may not have quite existed beyond her imagination, she brings alive to us, characters of the taverns and streets of old European towns still observable in their fading probable extinction. Particularly night life pushes these characters out of their hiding places and brings them to the old and bohemian parts of towns ...Malu is also bringing her own personal experiences into these quaint and picturesque narratives in her trilogy "The Bowler Hat" ("The Kimono, the Bowler Hat & the Green Armchair", "The Kimono, the Bowler Hat & the Green Armchair, He Comes no More", & "Mary Magdalene, Discarded") - which might turn into a longer series - is a clear example of bringing her life into the scenes and mood of where she inhabits: her studio, her room, the taverns she's a regular at, the public square where men waste their lives at card playing, the eternal earthy woman whose life marked its wounds on flesh ...
QUARANTINE SERIES • 7 artworks
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During the infamous CoV mandated semi and full quarantine lockdown of 2020 in Portugal, Malu at times[...]
During the infamous CoV mandated semi and full quarantine lockdown of 2020 in Portugal, Malu at times only had her room and a limited view from her window, to stare at a saddened nearly dead world, her relentless soul near gave up, but she reacted, claiming life and a future, she invades her work with colors and poetry, a yearning for living ...
Life of Sand, People of Clay (Magical Realism) • 18 artworks
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Vida de Areia, Gente de Barro (barro refers to mud but also to clay/ceramics) - I like to write the[...]
Vida de Areia, Gente de Barro (barro refers to mud but also to clay/ceramics) - I like to write the words in Portuguese too, because the words are so sonorous. In my double life as single person and mother, between Brooklyn and O Porto, and so many other things of life that bring duplicity, this album puts together works spanning decades but all connected in theme and earthy colors or materials. This gallery expresses a contrast, a dichotomy, not dissimilar to my double life. The dichotomy of the ephemeral quality of life, and how simultaneously, time seems to come to a halt, or at least, come to a slow unravelling in the lull of an afternoon or dusk, the stupor of heat or alcoholism, etc ... My narratives involve characters who become "salt sculptures', or clay pots, frozen in time, while most things around them are shifting, perceptually or moving ... So we've both the instability or temporality of the environment in contrast to the perennial, almost eternal quality of quintessential characters which seem to emerge from the past, which I still observe alive and living in the paths of my travels. The landscapes become movements or ruins, but the people become clay pots or still-life/s.
I'm attempting to describe the ephemeral while holding on to moments which perhaps never quite existed ... a nostalgia for a time that never was ... as the Portuguese saying goes, "the past never passes", the past lives in the present, and therefore, future ... a narrative of people who have little material comfort or wealth, but maintain a dignified presence, more alive than most, because they're in the now, and now ... My spaces may be made of water or slippery sand, shifting perspectives, but my people are made of clay or rusty metal, like pots, they're vessels of history, of time, of human experience ... Cubism and distortions assist me in incorporating such elements of existentialism, it's a if they help me create a form of magical realism in visual form ...
I'm attempting to describe the ephemeral while holding on to moments which perhaps never quite existed ... a nostalgia for a time that never was ... as the Portuguese saying goes, "the past never passes", the past lives in the present, and therefore, future ... a narrative of people who have little material comfort or wealth, but maintain a dignified presence, more alive than most, because they're in the now, and now ... My spaces may be made of water or slippery sand, shifting perspectives, but my people are made of clay or rusty metal, like pots, they're vessels of history, of time, of human experience ... Cubism and distortions assist me in incorporating such elements of existentialism, it's a if they help me create a form of magical realism in visual form ...
STILL-LIFE/S (Not so Still Magical Realism) • 10 artworks
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With a still-life there's less pressure to invent, to come up with a theme, to have something to say[...]
With a still-life there's less pressure to invent, to come up with a theme, to have something to say ... one avoids the block of the empty white canvas as soon as one begins to make marks, one mark brings the response of the next mark, and so on, in a dialogue between maker, material and design ... making the process more intuitive and less conscious ... suddenly, I realize that there is plenty to say, among others, the visual dialogue with makers from the past, is a relevant to have ... My still-life/s are filled with mood, references to things that fascinate me and recurring themes, as well as personal objects which mean far more than the eye meets. For example, the guitar for many years represented a life partner who was a musician, later, just a love for the shape and aesthetic beauty of the instrument, vessels and jugs are linked to fertility and motherhood among other things such as rusticity and permanency ... statues/figures refer to rituals, contemplation, and all of them have a moody atmosphere ...
THE GARDEN (Magical Realism) • 5 artworks
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Playing with color as light, and perceptions of spacial and temporal relativeness or subjectivity, with[...]
Playing with color as light, and perceptions of spacial and temporal relativeness or subjectivity, with personal life references as well as a certain exoticism, Malu creates a perceptional imaginary world where time is slippery, while there’s an attempt at holding on to it, in the lull of an afternoon or rainy day, in the dusk of a day's end ...
GATES OF PERCEPTION - Earlier (Magical Realism) Works • 5 artworks
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These themes will repeat throughout her work, but particularly with the gallery named, Life of Sand.[...]
These themes will repeat throughout her work, but particularly with the gallery named, Life of Sand. However, during these years Malu explored flatter and smoother surfaces, more literal forms of synthetic cubism, colors are light or temperatures. Still, personal references and themes permeate the work.
PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE COEXIST - THE EPHEMERAL (Early 2000s) • 4 artworks
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Large murals or installations, made of monoprints (these are normally created with electric dremel on[...]
Large murals or installations, made of monoprints (these are normally created with electric dremel on plexyglass, ink and rubbing, etc) made spontaneously with a general idea of an image in mind. They are created purposefully offregister, which means the images off the press do not match perfectly its neighbor, the image comes to life as if in a puzzle, choosing the prints which match best the location, so print number 3 might be side by side with print number 12, the large overall image controls where the smaller units go, to create a whole, an image of movement, of ephemeral nature, natural phenomena, and so on ...
EARLY WORKS, "Magical Realism", elements of expressionism (a selection) • 12 artworks
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One of the hardest things for a spontaneous, sincere and searching artist, is to find that narrow focus[...]
One of the hardest things for a spontaneous, sincere and searching artist, is to find that narrow focus and consistency galleries not only expect us to present in a website portfolio, but they themselves desire to present our work in such a focused path. Well, that is highly artificial, perhaps not so difficult to a young contemporary artist who has been conditioned in this manner by schooling or market forces, and/or uses limited elements of art & design. However, for a searching artist, it is almost impossible to narrow one's investigation to just a few elements of art and design. Even famous artists we know of, had their escapades out of the main style they seem to be researching, or by which we identify them; at times, they follow/ed two, even more, quite distinct paths/styles, examples are JM Turner, who on the side of his abstracted expressionistic landscapes, made a collection of watercolor erotica; or say, Picasso; the most obvious example. Toward the last years of his synthetic cubism phase (later he'd return to it), he was deeply embedded in his neoclassical phase, exploring monumental linear classical and semi-classical aesthetics and themes in drawing, prints and paintings.
In this website I'm presenting the highlights of my entire artistic career and some paintings do not fit particularly well among the other series/galleries. Some work is academic (graduate school) or semi-academic, some almost realistic, some expressionistic in nature, and almost always some element of distortion or synthetic cubism is present inconspicuously, which is innate to my very being!
In this website I'm presenting the highlights of my entire artistic career and some paintings do not fit particularly well among the other series/galleries. Some work is academic (graduate school) or semi-academic, some almost realistic, some expressionistic in nature, and almost always some element of distortion or synthetic cubism is present inconspicuously, which is innate to my very being!
Sold Artworks • 30 artworks
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