ABOUT
It is through her wandering experiences, the mental images given by her thoughts and the photographs of certain details and organic motifs that Stefanie Pullin creates. Trying to understand the natural world, how we modify it by making ourselves present, occupying space, destroying and building; or what role instinct and feeling play in relation to reason, are some of the features that define her research.
Her works explore the knowing how to see and knowing how to look, something which stems from an inner path. A road map and personal itinerary, marked by encountered or self-imposed obstacles, to which the artist proposes, conquers and surpasses, in a sensible search for the boundaries between the sacred and the profane; order and chaos; consciousness and instinct. Pervious to the knowledge that her experience gives her, Stefanie builds her work, not particularly interested in recording what nature has of physical, or material, but what is deeper, that emanates from it. Thus, against the current demand for consumption of the immediate, its production looks at nature in the light of hierophanies, allowing finally that all this is revealed as a temple; as an absolute reality; and as a center, from which the cosmic unfolding and the ontological explanation of the world becomes possible.
In an attentive search, her painting uses formal elements that are subject to a permanent game of repetition, construction and deconstruction. White and light, as well as the use of color and contrast effects, play a central role in compositional work that uses visual and affective memory to build. It is also through a conscious technique that both the spontaneity proper to the medium and to an induced and manipulated control, allow the painting to take shape. The resulting images, on the threshold between the figurative and the abstract; the real and the imaginary, confirm the suggestive value of her work - a fluid reflection which is left open, over the ever-changing and ephemeral side of life.
With the installation, her practice gains three-dimensionality; and invites us to inhabit it, reinforcing the dialogue between the tangible and the intangible. Regardless of the medium - painting, installation or photography - it is this experience of the natural life, ineluctably temporal, that her work seeks to capture and make transparent. Chance, too, takes an essential part in this body of work, which opens itself, not only to the possibility of existent surroundings - to the vicinities, to the periphery - but also to the free interpretatio n of the observer.
Madalena Dornellas Galvão
BIO
Born in Guatemala, into a family of European and central American heritage, her starting point was a year in Ar.Co Academy in Lisbon, Portugal where she studied painting and fine arts. Afterwards, Stefanie enrolled at the Fine Arts University of Lisbon where she created and developed the bases of her visual work. During her third university year, she lived and studied in France for 6 months at the University of Paris. She finished her degree of Visual Arts in 2015.
Lives and works in Lisbon.
Individual Exhibitions
2023 - Inferno Verde / Paraíso Perdido, Galeria São Mamede, Lisbon.
2021 - Undefining Formations, Galeria de São Mamede, Lisbon.
2017 - Permanências Ilusórias, Portugal Telecom Foundation, Lisbon.
2016 - Twisted Roots, Geological Museum, Lisbon.
Colective Exhibitions
2023 - Capiti Art Mind, Museu da Eletricidade, Lisbon.
2023 - Drowning Room, Cosmos, Lisbon.
2023 - Pintura Sem Fim, Brotéria, Lisbon.
2019 - Elemental Origins, Boa Lab, Lisbon.
2018 - 10/40, Kubikgallery, Oporto.
2018 - Pele - Água: Exposição MArt, Water Museum, Lisbon.
2018 - Locus19, Lisbon. (organizer)
2017 - Together for Haiti, UNESCO, Paris, France.
2016 - Seniors Exhibition, Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes, Lisbon.
2016 - ARTE EN MAYO 2016, Rozas Botrán Foundation, Guatemala.
2016 - PERIPLOS - ARTE PORTUGUES DE HOY, CAC Málaga, Contemporary Art Centre of Málaga, Spain.
Artistic Residencies
2017 - Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, Lisboa