Galeria Nuno Centeno is glad to show, for the first time at our gallery, João Penalva.
João Penalva (b. Lisbon, 1949) studied visual arts at the Chelsea School of Art in London from 1976 to 1981 (BA (Hons) and Master of Fine Arts). He taught at the Malmö Art Academy, Lund University, Sweden, from 2002 to 2024. João Penalva’s first steps in the visual arts were focused on painting. From the 1990s onwards, film, photography, and installation became part of his means of expression. His body of work uses text, image, and research as processes to connect theoretical and narrative approaches, fusing the real and the imaginary.
He represented Portugal at the São Paulo International Biennale in 1996 and the Venice Biennale in 2001. He exhibited at the Berlin Biennale in 2001 and at the Sydney Biennale in 2002. In 2026, Culturgest held a major solo exhibition dedicated to the artist, curated by Bruno Marchand. He was also honoured as the winner of the 2026 EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize that same year.
João Penalva has lived and worked in Lisbon since 2021, having lived in London between 1972 and 2021.
Penalva began his dance studies in 1968 at the São Carlos National Theatre, which he continued at the London School of Contemporary Dance in London. In the 1970s, he was a dancer with the companies of Pina Bausch in Wuppertal, Gerhard Bohner in Darmstadt, and Jean Pomares in Copenhagen.

Hunting scene, 2026

“During my first year at the Chelsea School of Art, in London in 1977, I made a painting featuring fans. The painting had two overlapping canvasses joined at an odd angle, and its formal structure brought to mind the work of a teacher of mine whom I greatly admired at the time. The fans were a pun on the fact that I was a fan of his work. His name was Stephen Buckley. That painting was important to me because it opened a door to other works that were different from my previous ones, somewhere between painting and sculpture. However, that door never swung wide open, and this ‘fan painting’ remained only as the curious record of a moment in my work as a student.
My friend Carol McNicholl, a renowned ceramicist, loved the piece. Shortly afterwards, I gave it to her. Carol passed away last year. Her son, Beckett, whom I had babysat, grew up with this painting on the wall of his home. He knew how fond I was of it and gave it to me. I then thought I should paint another picture with fans. What would it be like to recreate something I had done 49 years earlier? No matter how hard I tried, the painting stubbornly veered away from the celebratory tone of the first fan painting, and I wasn’t surprised. It became sombre and heavy, bearing no resemblance to the cheerful tone of the ‘original’ with its colours reminiscent of postwar French abstract painting. The colours of partridges, quails and wild ducks entered it, the open fans turned into wings, and Hunting scene became its inevitable title.”

Patio (after the wedding), 2026

“The pattern of the stone-paved courtyard in Patio (After the wedding) was copied from a photograph that I thought I had taken in Japan. However, due to a cataloguing error, it had ended up in the wrong folder and it turned out that the photograph had actually been taken in Portugal. The confetti scattered amongst the stones are the festive remnants of a wedding celebration.
The fact that the stone remnants are depicted as burlap perfectly illustrates the freedom of representation in painting – everything can be both false and true at the same time; everything pretends and represents.”

Interior with bone, 2026

“Interior with bone is one of those pieces that marks the beginning of a new language when it is created. While nothing is completely new, the interplay of its elements – what I call ‘language’ – remains unknown to me. I can already foresee other works featuring displayed objects. Display apparatus have always fascinated me – not only those of art exhibitions, but also haberdasheries, tyre shops and tailors’ shops, all sorts of spaces designed by someone with a scenic, theatrical vision who know how to present objects to the public for their appreciation and delight. This whale vertebra has many sides, tops and bases due to the organic richness of its form, and I have not fixed it in any one position as the correct one by an authorial decision. It can be handled and moved around on the shelf, thereby altering the entire piece.
In what city and in what century could a carpenter’s shop have been located next to a natural history museum?”

Fumeur, 2026

“Fumeur is a ‘raw’ collage made from scraps of clothing worn by French factory workers in the late nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The nicotine-stained strip is a remnant of Japanese fabric. The background immediately reminded me of Vieira da Silva’s libraries and is a hand-stamped Indian fabric. The linen that frames the piece is also French but it was purchased in Soho, in London. The seams and loose threads are what was once the closest to those anonymous workers.”

Bodice, 2022

“When I started thinking about this exhibition, the idea of two simultaneous exhibitions emerged as a compositional concept. What connection could there be between these works and a series of photographs of a female dancer’s bodice from an unknown Orientalist ballet, perhaps Arab, or Indian? There are four black-and-white photographs and one in colour, which suggests that the black-and-white ones are fictions of classic photography created from colour photographs. The imagination knows no bounds, and I am sure that someone will surprise me by finding connections between Hunting scene, Interior with bone, Patio (After the wedding), Fumeur and Small abstract with grey background. For me, however, this simultaneity, this juxtaposition, this rhythm – photography, painting, photography, painting – is interesting enough. Is this invisible dancer, represented by her costume, a presence that will draw us to the theatre, representation, and a character?”

Small abstract with grey background, 2026

“Small abstract with a grey background, 2026, is exactly what its title tells us: small and abstract. It is also made from the fabric of French workers’ overalls, to which a ‘touch of luxury’ has been added in the form of two tiny velvet rectangles in complementary colours – green and red. This incongruous ‘touch’ catches the eye, with no explanation for its existence and no story beyond its own creation.”

Gingko December Ginza North Tokyo, 2006, and Gingko January Ginza North Tokyo, 2007

“I found and photographed these ginkgo trees in Tokyo during a very cold New Year period, when a giant vertical banner stretched along the entire height of a department store, called for “Christmas, please!” in allegorical graphics. The den-chu – the power lines that weave wonderfully complex patterns across the Japanese sky, are just like the branches of the ginkgo trees in winter, silhouetted against the sky. Their titles suggest a documentary mode.”

Four light bulbs, yellow and clear, 2013

“Four light bulbs, yellow and clear is part of a series in which I photographed light bulbs of various types – some lit, some unlit and some burned out – in a wide variety of compositions. I was interested in capturing the light bulbs as sculptures of light and their shadows. The gallery room that shows the most traces of its industrial past seemed like the perfect place to hang it.”

Looking up in Osaka, 2006-2026

“I began working on the series Looking up in Osaka in 2006, and I have continued to do so to this day. The fact, that these are found drawings – that is, drawings that I did not create myself, but rather found and framed – is comforting to me. I can always marvel at them, thinking they are perfect – something I would never think if they were my own work. I own the image because I removed it from its mundane setting and transformed it into a drawing against a background. As in Japanese prints, the drawing is precise and sharp, consisting of black lines on a background of delicate colours that replace the summer sky which is always grey despite the intense heat. This will be preserved forever in the original negatives of these images. The scarcity of clouds makes summer the best time of the year to photograph them. A sort of ‘hunting season’ begins in late July, when the rains stop and I arrive.”