LISBON.- Galeria Vera Cortês announced The Origin of the Predatory Animals, a solo exhibition by Portuguese artist João Louro, opening on 25 September 2025.

Based on Charles Darwin's writings on the origin of species, this exhibition addresses natural selection within the group of predators, of which humans are a part. Humans are the species that has become dominant and the largest and most fearsome predator.

Born in Lisbon in 1963, where he continues to live and work, João Louro studied Architecture at the University of Lisbon and Painting at the Ar.Co School of Visual Art. His practice encompasses painting, sculpture, photography, and video, articulating a visual and conceptual vocabulary that critically examines the role of images and language in contemporary culture.

Louro’s work descends from minimal and conceptual art, while remaining deeply engaged with the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. His practice draws on a broad constellation of references, ranging from Pop culture to structuralism and post-structuralism, invoking thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot, as well as artists including Donald Judd and, persistently, Marcel Duchamp. This extensive lexicon situates Louro’s work within an exploration of how collective symbols and visual codes shape cultural imagination.

In his own words, João Louro describes himself as “a son of Minimal and Conceptual Art.” Reflecting on his formation in the 1990s, he emphasizes his attraction to a visual language of reduction, clarity, and precision:

“I always intended to escape that consequence of the American 1950s - Expressionism, metaphysics, noise. What interested me more was the moment that followed, when the art world was swept clean and began to be distilled. That marked me profoundly.”

(Interview by Isabel Nogueira for Contemporânea, 2019 - https://contemporanea.pt edicoes/01-02-2019/ entrevista-joao-louro)

Louro represented Portugal at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, with the exhibition ‘I Will Be Your Mirror | Poems and Problems’. With The Origin of the Predatory Animals, his new project at Galeria Vera Cortês, the artist continues to articulate a critical dialogue between language, image, and history, offering works that map both personal and generational topographies of time.

João Louro was born in 1963, in Lisbon, where he lives and works. He studied archi- tecture at the University of Lisbon and painting at the Ar.Co School of Visual Art. João Louro’s body of work encompasses painting, sculpture, photography and video.

João Louro’s work descends from minimal and conceptual art, with special attention to avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. It draws out a topography of time, with references that are personal but mainly they are generational. With regular recourse to language as a source, as well as the written word, he seeks a review of the image in contemporary culture, starting out from a set of representations and symbols from the collective visual universe. Minimalism, conceptualism, Pop culture, structuralism and post-structuralism, authors such as Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Georges Bataille and Blanchot as well as artists like Donald Judd and the ever-present Duchamp, form the reference lexical universe of the artist.

He was the portuguese representative at the Venice Biennale of 2015, with the exhibition "I Will Be Your Mirror | Poems and Problems".