LISBON.- MAAT presents the exhibition Gestos by Ana L閛n, in the Ashtray 8 space at MAAT Central. An artist who first appeared in Portugal in the 1980s, L閛n settled in Paris in the same decade, where she still lives today. The artist works in parallel with drawing and film, using analog technology (film and a Super 8 camera) to make stop motion animation films in which she recreates the movement of bodies from images captured one by one. In both fields, the artist has always developed languages of great simplicity or austerity of means.
In this exhibition, presented in six successive rooms, a significant number of male figures, almost always shown in “American plan” and dressed in very simple clothes, perform a restricted number of repetitive gestures in a loop. These figures can hardly be distinguished from each other. The feeling of depersonalization is accentuated by the fact that the extras are repeated from video to video, representing different pieces (or different scenes from the same piece) with the same closet, the same type of temporality, gesture, scenography, chromatic dominant, lighting or sound background.
The models Ana L閛n uses are Action Man. They are around 25 cm tall, made entirely of plastic and metal components, and are perfectly articulated (neck, arms and legs, wrists and toes). The choice of dolls he works with is not determined by whether or not they are male models, but by the expressive neutrality (or even inexpressiveness) and physical mobility that defines them. Jo鉶 Pinharanda, the curator, writes in the exhibition guide: “Ana L閛n also boycotts the conventional role of traditional animated puppets by denying them any narrative dimension: in fact, in her short films, nothing happens or what happens is exclusively descriptive.”
Ana L閛n (Lisbon, 1957) lives and works in Paris. She has a degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon and a Masters in Aesthetics from the Universit Paris 1 Panth閛n-Sorbonne.
Her artistic work has developed between drawing and film. She has been exhibiting since 1982, both individually and collectively. Solo exhibitions include Azulvermelho (with Pedro Calapez, Galeria Diferen鏰, Lisbon, 1982), installation at the M閚agerie de Verre (Paris, 1992), Metamorfoses (National Museum of Natural History and Science, Lisbon, 1994), Drawings and Films (Centre Culturel Portugais / Fondation Gulbenkian, Paris, 2003), 7 Films (Cinemateca Portuguesa - Museu do Cinema, Lisbon, 2005), Strip-Tease film (Th殁tre du Rond-Point, Paris, 2007), Bodies, CAPC - C韗culo de Artes Pl醩ticas de Coimbra, 2021). Group exhibitions include Instala玢o (Galeria Metr髉ole, Lisbon, 1983), Arquip閘ago (SNBA - Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes, Lisbon, 1985), L Fora (Museu da Presid阯cia da R閜ublica, Lisbon, 2009), Variations Portugaises (CAC Meymac - Centre d'art contemporain, 2017), A Metade do C閡 (Funda玢o Arpad Szenes - Vieira da Silva, Lisbon, 2019), Tudo o que eu quero - Artistas Portuguesas de 1900 a 2020 (Funda玢o Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon 2021) and Hist髍ias de uma Cole玢o - Arte Moderna e Contempor鈔ea do CAM (Funda玢o Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2023).
Ana L閛n's work is represented in collections such as CAM - Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Caixa Geral de Dep髎itos, Museu de Lisboa, Funda玢o Carmona e Costa and Funda玢o de Serralves.
