Exhibition "membrane", by Anna Livia Monahan

Primal energy. Flaming twilights, liminal spaces and indiscernible zones; lamps, rays and solar bursts; scales and exoskeletons. Everything that is born, sprouts, hatches, then seizes, devours. Explosion, rupture and ecstasy. What was inside turns inside out, becomes outside. Everything that once embraced and separated, soon tears apart. What was life becomes death: it converts, reinvents itself, is reborn stronger.

Em membrane, Anna Livia Monahan It creates a pictorial field of strong colors, dense atmospheres, and unusual scenes marked by cycles of transformation. Here, the term does not refer to a specific biological structure, but to a principle. It refers to the interface where the relationship, exchange, and translation between the body and the environment take place; to the tenuous envelope that separates and connects, that envelops and exposes; to the limits that demarcate the boundary and the transition. In his compositions, fragile surfaces and extreme processes operate a fundamental opposition. Birds and eggs, arthropods, the earth's crust, and translucent fabrics symbolize the tension inherent in the threshold and metamorphosis. They are elements that emerge as sensitive forms, suspended in the instant before fracture, before transmutation.

Her research begins with empirical observation and the assimilation of knowledge about natural forces. Her main interest lies in the mysteries of vital energy embedded in geological time, which erupts in births, travels through the food chain, and is transferred from one phase to another. In this sense, her practice is guided by a dissecting gaze, one that pierces layers, that insists on the thickness of matter. Painting acts as a revealing cut: each image suggests a membrane about to rupture, not as an isolated violent gesture, but as an inevitable passage between phases.

The time that emerges from these scenes is neither singular nor linear: it is imprecise and impermanent. Every earthly event, even on a small scale, connects to the cosmic dimension. Past and future meet on the horizon, so that every form carries within it the memory of the earth and the universe, as well as the mutable character of all that exists, anticipating what is to come. In this sense, in his paintings, light is not merely illumination: it is the force that generates, maintains, and destroys. It is a light that burns, veils, and reveals, in a dramatic play of shadows. In many works, the glare centralizes the composition and organizes the objects around it, creating a balance between attraction and risk. There is always the potential eruption, the announcement of the trance, and creatures momentarily static before a greater event: as if the world were taking a deep breath before the impact.

This dynamic is accentuated by the vast, empty landscapes. Against depopulated horizons, beings appear as individuals at the mercy of larger systems. In these paintings, emptiness is never absence, but existential terrain: a space where the gaze lingers and self-awareness intensifies. In this vastness, a natural event – ​​a vibrant sunset, a luminosity filtering through the clouds, an animal shedding its skin, one animal devouring another – can become the inner landscape of the beholder, marking the retina and memory, awakening emotions and sensations.

The materiality of the painting reinforces this metaphysical experience. Contrasts leap out, and the sgraffito, which exposes previous layers, makes the pictorial plane itself incorporate the logic of skin, of crust. Silvers and golds emerge as non-white, shimmering, almost mineral light. Transparencies obtained through thin glazes make wings, scales, and carapaces seem to be traversed by the environment. The formal does not illustrate the poetic – it is the very field in which poetry is constructed, between light and dark, between revelation and mystery.

In these images, there is a balance between delicacy and brutality, between glory and downfall. The hatching of the cicada, the bird emerging from the egg, the butterfly plucked by a bird's beak, a fish torn apart underwater. Although influenced by the richness of fables, Anna Livia does not idealize nature nor instrumentalize it as a moral allegory; on the contrary, she amplifies its strange, surreal character, making visible how much these phenomena affect us emotionally, psychologically, and physiologically. The paintings provoke a restless fascination, producing physical sensations – a chill down the spine, a tingle, a contraction – while preserving a contemplative, magnetic, and silent dimension. Each sign is simultaneously a synesthetic trigger and a key to immersion.

The artist's work functions as a high-voltage device that brings the human closer to the familiar unknown – the existential wonder that surrounds and composes us. If there is an aspiration for a new reality in her work, it is through the intensification of what already exists. By highlighting the fascinating, strange, and feverish nature of the world, these records speak of our perception, of the search for what eludes us, and of how we give meaning to existence, projecting metaphors and constructing narratives from what we find. It is in this gesture that a symbolic fabric is formed, always unstable and in mutation, capable of giving tone to life.

Germano Dushá

Service
Exhibition membrane
From February 5th to March 14nd
Tuesday to Friday, from 11pm to 19pm