The Work by Luís Athouguia brings us one step closer to the infinite dimension of creation. It awakens our senses and appeals to our feeling of affinity.
The orchestration of his Work has led to a new, vigorous and unmistakable lexicon of unadulterated abstraction. The motto behind his Work is built upon the tragedy of its own nonexistence, in a chromatic and formal text that relies upon the unfathomable quality of all the mystery suggested therein but not revealed.
The soundless composite nature of material and the soul’s excursions through it.
The consecration of the unpredictable.
The apparent denial of the regulating geometry of gestures overhung by a splendid halo of timelessness.
The shapes of Athouguian vocabulary which are representations of unknown phenomena are organized like chrysalises of an enchanting metamorphism, a revealing oracle, an impenetrable rite.
The paintings by Luís Athouguia are a place of dreamlike visions, of multiple ceremonies, an iconographic venue of abstractions both in shape and in content. In them we come across allegories, suggestions and allusions to a form of writing that is inscribed figuratively in the body of the abstract text. In the latter we dare to identify (or merely catch a glimpse of) birds, fish, faces or masks thereof, insignias, signs, periphrases and paraphrases, the silences of the seas, half-moons, efflorescences and organic crystallizations, a winged eye, the eye of a scorpion, a dinosaur eye, an eye of algae…
(translated by Ana Rosa Ascenso)