In The Experience of Being: Approaching The Window

Cristina Robalo

“It is not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather, image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation. In other words: image is dialectics at a standstill. For while the relation of the present to the past is purely temporal, the relation of what-has-been to the now is dialectical: not temporal in nature but figural.”

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

Hiatus is Nuno Lorena’s most recent exhibition. At Nosbaum Reding | Projects, between May and June of this year, we encountered a body of work grounded in oil painting. From the outset, the chosen title draws attention to the significance of the word itself: a fissure or opening, a break in continuity, an absence, a gap and/or an interval. On the one hand, there is a group of paintings that evoke the still-life tradition, establishing a dialectic between transparency and shadow; on the other, a smaller group of seascapes which, through their relationship with the exterior, invoke the experience of a territory already apprehended.

Precisely because the word hiatus suggests an opening and/or an interval, Lorena reveals a relationship between past and present, visible and invisible, interior and exterior, in which transparency makes memory impossible to decipher. And yet it casts its shadow upon what lies before our eyes.

There is a movement in the passage from inside to outside and vice versa which, as an impulse, establishes a connection between each of the groups of paintings presented in Hiatus. In the first group of still-life, there is a body, place or territory that has disappeared from view but is still preserved inwardly, however fleetingly it may reside in the memory that remains of it. The image must therefore be restored 1 for the experience of it to become tangible once again. In Rose in Vase, Still Life, Still Life (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), Curtain (brown), Curtain (blue), Flower, Interior with Still Life, Interior (brown) and Interior (orange), the transition from interior to exterior merges with the images’ movement back and forth. This movement, from inside to outside, recalls and provokes memory: it stirs it during the act of painting.

The seascapes, by contrast, bring together the relationship between outside and inside. Nuno Lorena represents the element of the sea in the paintings Seascape, Seascape (2), (3), (4) and (6). The conjunction of outside and inside takes shape through a mechanism familiar to the painter: being a surfer, surfing, and reading the swell. Focused, identifiable, legible, each work creates uncertainty as to what comes from within and what exists outside. Here, however, we know that the movement is the reverse of the previous one: it travels from the exterior to the interior. Nor should we overlook the parallel between this back-and-forth and the movement of the tide: its ebb and flow.

1 In St Augustine’s Confessions.

The dialectic between what once was and what will never be again forms a mist that settles like a shadow. In the interruption of the continuity [of the images], there remains a glimpse of the figure which, magnetically bound, cannot be separated.

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Cristina Robalo: Hiatus presents us with a group of oil paintings produced in 2026. At first glance, we perceive a veil, or glaze, which allows us to glimpse a space between the visible and the invisible. This space accentuates a moment, an interval in time, as the title of the exhibition itself suggests. I would like to begin precisely by distinguishing two moments within this group of paintings: the visible and the invisible.

Nuno Lorena: There have been periods in my life that were very significant and which, for some reason, I had never addressed in my painting. I don’t know why! I probably wasn’t ready to do so. The paintings in the exhibition are still lifes and seascapes, and they are associated with particular experiences from my childhood. They are very vague memories that I revisited. There is a great distance between the moment when these images were first seen and the moment when I represented them.

CR: You’re talking about images stored in your memory?

NL: Yes. They’re images that came to me. I have a terrible memory. I often feel like asking people what their memories are like, or how that film is projected for them. Usually, they describe them to me and I become completely frustrated, because my memories are like a photograph, a still frame from a film, or, to use something we have now, a GIF. For me, there is a movement that repeats itself, again and again and again. There is nothing before it and nothing after it. The memory is crystallized. Take the painting Rose in Vase, for example. It exists because my grandmother, who lived at the top of Rua da Fonte do Cabo in Ericeira, in a first-floor flat, always had flowers in the house. I remember sofas upholstered in a very soft, velvety, red fabric, the colour of that painting. I wanted to arrive at that colour. Precisely that colour.

CR: Did you want to return to that place, to your grandmother’s house?

NL: It was a way of sitting on those sofas again and seeing the flowers on the table. And it’s a painting with which I have a love-hate relationship, because it betrayed me. I painted it and went home triumphant. The next day, the colour I had made had changed. Colours always change slightly as they dry. I panicked! But then I thought, ‘Accept it.’ Perhaps it’s even something positive to add to the experience. ‘It’s there now!’ There are always transformations!

CR: Besides Rose in Vase, there are another seven paintings depicting flowers in a vase or vessel on a table — Flower, Interior with Still Life, Still Life, Still Life (2), (3), (4), (5), (6) — and another five in which the flowers merge with a window or curtain — Interior with Still Life (three horizontal monochrome paintings), Interior (Orange), Interior (Brown). There is a dialectic between these elements.

NL: All the paintings are connected to a place, and that place is associated with the memory or the absence of memory of my childhood and youth. For as long as I can remember, I went to my grandparents’ house in Ericeira. When I was in the house looking out at the sea, there was the constant movement of the swell. Always, always that movement. And there was something spiritually comforting about it, with the smell of the sea drifting in through the window. My mother is from Mafra. My grandfather was in the military and was stationed at the Mafra Convent. I lived in the convent! When I was learning to ride a bicycle along its corridors, I remember being terribly afraid whenever I approached the corners. And the corridors were enormous. The Mafra Convent has an extraordinarily powerful presence; it is impossible to remain unaffected by those centuries-old stone floors, by all those materials, by the dampness in the air. Everything there carried an enormous weight. And while the corners were where it was darkest, there was also a light that settled upon them. I returned to the convent four or five years ago. I asked the army for permission and they granted it. I went back to the flat where I had lived. It is no longer a flat, but it was at the time. On the right were the officers’ quarters, where I lived, and on the other side were the soldiers’ barracks. The painting Curtain (blue) came about because of the convent. The atmosphere inside that corridor was intensely cold, stone, lime and so on, and that light… falling on the curtain… I don’t know why I added the curtain. There was probably a curtain at home.

CR: All the paintings have that light. There is an obscure dimension connected with what cannot immediately be seen, yet which is made visible through this blurred luminosity, as though a mist hung over each painting.

NL: There’s a Leonard Cohen lyric that says, ‘There is a crack, a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in.’ That line — and one or two others — has stayed with me. There’s something mystical about it. It automatically projects an image into my mind, although I’m not entirely sure what that image is. These paintings really are my experience of being. Of being, too, at the Colégio Militar between the ages of ten and sixteen. Boarding school was difficult, very difficult. And when we went home, it was madness. At school there were other corridors, with doors leading into classrooms and windows through which we could see outside. From a certain distance, leaning against a wall and looking out of the corner of my eye, I would peer through the window and see these plays of light. The light coming through the window, the light entering through the corridor door, there were these movements coming from outside. So there is always a film between what one sees and oneself, and it becomes thicker as time passes. Memory changes, and I become less precise about the elements I registered at the moment I first saw them.

CR: Perhaps those elements never disappeared; perhaps they simply needed to find a form in which to be inscribed. They emerged in a sudden flood. Within this body of paintings there are two groups, or two families, as we have been discussing: the first, consists of flowers in vases or vessels and curtains, all of which are veiled; the other, comprises the paintings of the sea, in which everything is visible and identifiable. Both groups establish a relationship between interior and exterior.

NL: Yes. The curtains and flowers belong to the same group; they are members of the same body. The sea paintings are another family, they are my family. I surfed for over thirty years, so I know waves well. Painting them doesn’t unsettle me. I’m still inside the house, except that this time I’m looking out through the window. I’m looking towards Praia do Norte in Ericeira. There is movement, there is swell, and there is already more materiality than there was in memories. Memories are an experience. They are distant.

CR: There is also a swell within memory. A movement back and forth.

NL: For me, it’s terribly difficult. That’s why I sometimes discuss memories with other people. Butwhen I say I have a terrible memory, I mean that most people remember primary school; I don’t. I retain three or four situations. I don’t remember my classmates’ names; I don’t know who went to school with me. From the Colégio Militar, I still have three or four friends who are very dear to me.

CR: So the sea is focused, visible; it comes from outside and exists in the exterior. Childhood and adolescent memories, by contrast, are blurred and mysterious, containing as much darkness as light. Do photographic images exist in printed form during the process?

NL: I use photography as a starting point, something that comes close to the idea I have in mind. For example, when I look at the flowers, it’s as though I have a map: I mark the coordinates and paint. They are memories. In the sea paintings, there is a photograph that helps give me an overall image.

CR: So what exists within you but has no outline needs, in painting, maps of place, points of reference and coordinates. Is that it?

NL: Look, I identify those paintings as something more distant in time than looking at the sea with absolute awareness. When I look at the sea, I’m looking consciously; I am there specifically to do that. In the other paintings, there is something being imposed upon me, because the decisions had already been made for me — I didn’t choose them. My grandmother was the one who put the flowers on the table; the sofa was red because my grandparents chose it.

CR: That’s true, but there is a swell, whether in the images you see inwardly or through the exterior. And yet, with the passage of time, the back-and-forth movement resembles the ebb and flow of the sea. Wouldn’t you agree?

NL: Am I protecting myself? I don’t know whether my memory moves backwards and forwards. I find it difficult to accept that memory moves backwards and forwards because, for me, it is something so frozen. I had never thought about it in those terms. When I look at the swell coming in, I feel the need to approach the density of the water, the atmosphere, the rocks, the intensity that the sea conveys to me. The sea is more material; the other paintings aren’t. There really is a veil.

CR: This entire body of paintings dates from 2026. Given that there are two groups, or two families, did the process unfold simultaneously or in two separate phases?

NL: I ended up making these paintings unconsciously, although I see them as the consequence of all these movements, all these ingredients. I don’t have a predefined process; I don’t have a formula. Sometimes I have two or three paintings on the go; at other times I feel more comfortable starting one, finishing it and moving on to the next. I make one painting, then two, three, four, and a familiarity begins to emerge. I need to cultivate that familiarity in order to provide for those that follow. And I need that familiarity to be established before I can continue. There is a familiarity with the work that needs to be done.

CR: Is there a desire to make peace with the past?

NL: Every child feels frustrated at times. I felt frustrated. Even today, when I look back, one of the things that comes through most strongly is the sense that I was frustrated, and I never dealt with it very well. Sometimes I was at school and wanted to be at home. I was at home and wanted to be at school. When you are not emotionally present somewhere, your mind isn’t there either. I spent the day dreaming about something else. I transported myself; I took myself somewhere else. So I was never really in one place. I struggled with that. And yet, when I was looking at the sea, it wasn’t difficult to be there. Now I don’t feel bad about it, and something within me has calmed down. In a way, I have accepted it and, through that acceptance, that part of my experience has acquired a certain beauty, becoming a path that needed to be travelled and celebrated.

CR: You mentioned that you surfed for thirty years. When did you start, and how did you decide to move to Luxembourg, where there is no sea?

NL: Well, the first time I had a surfboard I was twelve. I was already at the Colégio Militar. Yes, it’s true, there’s no sea at all. None! My girlfriend sometimes says, ‘Let’s go to the lake — it’s water.’ No, I’m not going to any lake!

CR: It doesn’t move!

NL: Exactly. I came to Luxembourg because I had a couple of friends who were already living here. I asked whether I could come and stay for a week, with the idea of seeing whether I could find a part-time job, anything that would allow me to keep painting. After all, it’s the center of Europe, isn’t it? Oil painting was born just around the corner, 300 kilometers away. I found a strong presence of painting here. I arrived in May 2016. I was in a town called Differdange, where my friends were living, and I started looking for work. One Saturday I went for a walk and came to an area of the town where I saw studios for creatives. ‘Well, this is interesting!’ The property belongs to a steel company called ArcelorMittal. It had been vacant, and the local council developed an 80-year project making the property available as studios at very affordable rents. I couldn’t get hold of anyone while I was there, but when I got home I looked up what activities were taking place. I noticed that no one was teaching classes. At the time I had a blog, so I sent it to them and proposed teaching there. On Monday I received an email saying, ‘No, we’re not going to have initiatives such as classes, but we’d like to meet you.’ I cancelled my return trip to Portugal and waited fifteen days for the meeting. It went well and I found a room where I could work. I returned to Portugal to collect my things and moved here. From then on, I had work in Luxembourg. In 2016–2017, during the second or third Luxembourg Art Week, two friends and I got together and rented a space. We organised a group exhibition, and that was when Alex [Reding] saw my work.

CR: Was it at that fair — Luxembourg Art Week 2022 — that you showed the charcoal drawings entitled The Interior Series?

NL: Yes. The drawings were made up until 2023 and took me a very long time, longer than the paintings. I wanted to achieve a very deep, dense black in charcoal, and that means working layer upon layer, just as in painting. At a certain point, things become inverted and the most important tool is now an eraser. In the end, there are no hierarchies! The pencil is no more important than the eraser.

CR: Those small-format drawings are related to the veiled atmosphere of the paintings.

NL: Yes. Some of the drawings have open windows with a grid, just like the windows at the Mafra Convent. I think the drawings were already leading towards the paintings, but they still approached things from a voyeuristic perspective. In some way, I think I was afraid to become more intimately involved with what I was doing. At that point, I was still approaching the window.

CR: There are two paintings in this exhibition that I find intriguing. On the one hand, they are made in a similar way to the others, retaining the glaze or veil that blurs them; on the other, they are both painting and drawing. At the same time, the fact that there are only two of them — Head (after Tintoretto) — with the same title, both from 2026, and both depicting heads, sets them apart. Could you tell me about these paintings?

NL: They are two heads of Giuliano de’ Medici drawn by Tintoretto. I’m very fond of Tintoretto and, as it happens, these two heads were the very first paintings I made. I hadn’t started any of the other paintings in the exhibition yet. It’s curious. I painted them because I didn’t want to make them in charcoal. There was something about those dignified busts that captivated me. Whenever I’m working on a painting or drawing, I pay attention to the technical process, but there are certain things where, sometimes, I allow the impulse to emerge. Even if that means destroying what I had previously done, or transforming it. If it is consistent with the idea I want to develop, I’m satisfied. But more than that, there are things I understand while I’m painting. Ever since I began painting, there have been things I didn’t understand. The process of learning continues to be a process of understanding what one is doing. Why? How? There was something within me that I didn’t understand, and that made me uncomfortable. It doesn’t any more. It has to exist! The heads have that relationship between figure and background, which I love. Like Velázquez’s portraits. When that dynamic is there, the figure and, behind it, that abstract background so beautiful. There is nothing like it!

CR: Do you have a deeper relationship with the masters, with classical painters?

NL: No. I don’t like to think about it that way: whether a painting was made in 1400 or today. I’m not interested in that! One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, and one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, was looking at a work by Mark Rothko. There is so much that is good to see, to hear. It is infinite. As long as I feel an empathy with what I’m looking at… there is something organic that carries me away and draws me in. It calls to me!

CR: What are you going to do after Hiatus?

NL: Keep working. I like to maintain the movement, the impulse.