The natural hybridization that emanates from the personality of the artist Arlindo Arez reveals itself sequentially throughout his dedicated professional career in which he strives for the universal character of multiculturality combining it with the concerns of the artistic environment. This artist from the Algarve is a constructor of imagined images in which our  identity converges into the identity of others. Throughout his vast artistic biography, a very personal ecosystem develops in which a subject with no identifiable gender nurtures his works with an active and natural side that gives it a unique, almost understated, consciousness.

    The artist’s geographic origin is not trivial. The South, in whichever country it may be, offers character. Character of empathy, universality, of worthy, just and equitative compromise. In his own primal essence, this aloof, quiet and reflexive artist delights us with an endless amount of work, created in his studio surrounded by a singular and complex natural environment. Even though it could easily be defined, it is not my intention to develop a reductionist discourse on his recent work. The mission of any artist, and in the case of Arlindo, totally fulfilled, is to offer complex visions with visually simple, but conceptually understated, images. In fact, his visceral mind contradicts itself many times with the train of thought suggested by his series of sculptures. Albeit, this dichotomy between reason and emotion fades in his pictoric work in which he awakens pure gestual expression that transcends beyond the dichotomy embedded in the chromatism and praise of his region of origin.

    Even though he is an Artist of the world, Arlindo Arez doesn’t boast about his worldly baggage. On the contrary, his authentic ethic discretion shrouds him in an aura of autonomous simplicity incomparable to the sensibility demonstrated in his artistic production.

    On his exhibition ESTUARIOS the option to travel with him, through his world, his experiences and thoughts, in not an invitation. It is a silent walk through his varied worlds.  Observing and letting ourselves go by his emotions until they become our own, will be the most adequate way Arlindo Arez transports us through his interior world.

   ESTUÁRIOS frames the recent works of Arlindo Arez within a historic lineage of landscape painting, reinterpreted, of course. The blue spills and drippings remind us of aquatic landscapes. Although, by being submitted  to ab affirmative gesture of rigid geometries and darker tones, they transform the idea of water into an idea of ecosystem, of human or natural affirmation over the water. The paints can be understood as evocative of maps, archipelagos or piers. Therefore, we chose the theme of the Estuary, the transitional environment between a river and the sea, but even though it relies on the river and sea to define itself, it becomes a concrete landscape with autonomy.

    Each room has a different mood exploring a tripartition of life. As we may find in the work of Leonardo Coímbra (1833-1936), A Alegria, a Dor e a Graça, or even in Esperança, Amor e Saudade, by the painter António Carneiro (1872-1930), the disparity between the concepts that makeup the triptychs  (Joy-Hope, Pain-Love, Grace-Longing) show us that a specific symbolism is not attainable. On the other hand, what is desired is for the public to meditate about in what way the course of their lives until the exhibition and beyond, can be reflected on the atmospheres generated by each room.

    Returning to the image of the river that follows its course until the moment it reaches out and beyond the seat at the estuary, so do the sculpture, part of the same series, make their own path across the rooms. Synthesizing and materializing the concepts of each room, they cross the partition of the spaces like the river’s last breath, its swan song before fading away within the sea. We ask ourselves if the phases in which we organize the different periods of our lives aren’t themselves estuaries, moments of autonomy and boldness, between the constrained gallop of the river, before diving into this immensity of the next phase, the Sea.

   Arlindo Arez es una artista plástico de la región sur de Portugal. Un pintor y escultor que sueña, mientras que desliza su pincel sobre la vasta llanura del lienzo. Su trazo es vertical, incisivo, devastador. Sobre él, florece la vida y la fuerza que lo sustenta. Así ha transitado su vida a lo largo de su trayectoria, produciendo una obra coherente que ha estado palpitando entre el abstractismo, los paisajes atravesados por la incidencia de la temática energética y por la figuración como acción e intervención social.

    "El híbrido natural que emana de la personalidad artística de Arlindo Arez surge de manera secuencial a lo largo de su comprometida carrera profesional, en la que prima el sentido multicultural y universal de su obra. Este artista del Algarve portugués es un constructor de imágenes en las que la identidad de nosotros converge sobre la identidad de los otros", asegura, el artista plástico y comisario de arte, Fernando Barrionuevo. En su larga trayectoria artística surge un ecosistema muy personal, en el que el sujeto, sin género identificable, nutre a sus obras. Avanza sobre la superficie de los elementos, para fijarse en la parte activa y natural que la dota de una conciencia única. Arlindo Arez plasma una obra con una marcado sesgo de la tierra y de los territorios a los que pertenece. Su carácter, la empatía, la conceptualidad y el compromiso se abre paso en cada tallaje de sus esculturas, en cada textura que cobra vida en sus cuadros. Proyecta la esencia misma primigenia del artista. Un hombre tranquilo, sosegado y reflexivo, en el que el equilibrio de las formas, de las líneas y de los colores son cruciales para establecer el diálogo que contienen sus obras, para disipar el orden desde el caos en el que el ser humano es partícipe. Para predecir el abismo al que nos llevan sus cuadros.

    Arlindo Arez capta el momento. Transita a través de sus texturas oculares para advertir el milagro, la belleza, la armonía del mundo. Su expectativa en el Arte se transcribe en sus obras como la búsqueda de respuestas a las ensoñaciones complejas contra las que el ser humano lucha día a día. Son el resultado de su pugna contra el raciocinio del ser y son su reencuentro con la sustancia, con el alma, con el espíritu que subyace en la materia, que pule y que domina mediante cada uno de los embastes de su pincel, con cada uno de los combates que establece su cincel.