SURRENDER PARADISE by Joana Vieira de Castro

Some eras remain in our memory even when we haven’t lived through them. They survive through music, images, buildings, interiors, a certain light, or simply the sensation of a time we imagine to have existed. In SURRENDER PARADISE, Joana Vieira de Castro draws on this constructed memory to return to an imaginary summer world of the 1970s and 1980s.

Like a scene suspended in time, illuminated by the melancholy of a summer afternoon to the sound of Jan Hammer, set against the backdrop of postmodern architecture at its most pop. An atmosphere marked by generous curves, colorful planes, spacious and exuberant interiors, and an intense relationship with the warm light of a coastal area in a warm country. These are places associated with leisure, comfort, and the promise of a life removed from the daily grind. Many of these buildings were photographed by the artist before they ceased to exist, making photography an invisible part of her act of preservation.

An ode to leisure and comfort, but also to an artificial paradise taken to extremes, where exuberance may reveal a certain decadence. Between desire and nostalgia, SURRENDER PARADISE questions what remains when an idealized place becomes a memory.

The exhibition unfolds through two bodies of work that stand in contrast to one another. In the drawings created on the nearly extinct blue carbon paper, a technique the artist developed during her Master’s degree in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in London, the spaces appear on a small scale but are rendered in great detail. Architecture is viewed as a vast territory to be explored: every decorative element, every curve, and every object contributes to the construction of a universe that is both precise and imaginary.

In contrast, the larger works, created on canvas with acrylic, bring us closer to fragments of those same spaces. Here, the scale alters the relationship with the viewer. The image becomes more direct, and the surfaces more refined. Details disappear, as do most shadows, allowing specific aspects of architecture, color, and light to take center stage.

Between an obsessive attention to detail and its deliberate absence, between the small scale of the drawing and the expansive dimension of the painting, Joana Vieira de Castro constructs different ways of recalling a place in time. It is not necessarily a matter of recovering what once existed, but of reconstructing it from its traces, from the images that remain, and from what memory itself adds, leaving the promise of a place where everything seems to exist for pleasure.

The opening will take place on Friday, September 18, from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm.
This show will be on display until October 10, and admission is free.

BIOGRAPHY

Joana Vieira de Castro (Lisbon, 1986) is a visual artist who works primarily in the fields of painting, installation, and video. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon and completed her master’s degree in Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins in London.

Her practice revolves around the tensions between utopia and dystopia, exploring interior and exterior spaces, both physical and psychological. Through color, she constructs visual narratives in which the human figure appears in relation to nature and space, drawing on cultural and symbolic references.

Her work investigates how landscapes and environments can reflect mental and emotional states, creating images that hover between the real and the imagined. Her compositions evoke ambiguous atmospheres where different layers of meaning coexist.

Since 2009, the year she received the BPI Arte – Painting Award, she has been exhibiting regularly in national and international contexts. She has held solo exhibitions at galleries such as Serpente Contemporânea in Porto, the Espaço Cultural das Mercês in Lisbon, and the ORT Gallery in Birmingham. In parallel, she is a member of the Azarujinha Cultural Association, collaborating on initiatives in the artistic and cultural fields.