The Primordial Soup Shuffle

PUBLIC Gallery is proud to present The Primordial Soup Shuffle, the debut solo exhibition of Portuguese artist Francisco Mendes Moreira. Through a series of new work exploring the origin of life, we are invited to witness the cosmogonical shuffle at play from the microscopic to the infinite.

Comprised of over fifty works, the exhibition includes a salon style hang presenting windows into different primordial eras, each depicting a world that occupies a liminal space between reality and fantasy. Inspired by both scientific and conspiracy theories as well as creation myths, Moreira probes the concept of life’s first appearance, its clumsy awakening and the context of its origin.

Working primarily with oil pastels on found and collaged cardboard packaging, Moreira’s images have a potent immediacy. He often shifts between representative elements and abstract patterns, regularly challenging our perception of scale with viewpoints drifting from submersion among atoms to expansive astrological planes.

There are countless cosmogonies, which over millennia seek to tell the story of the creation of the cosmos and within The Primordial Soup Shuffle these different beginnings are alluded to, woven together and made new. Moreira’s practice at large can be seen as an ongoing commentary and staging of events related to the human condition and here, he asks those eternal questions; where do we come from, what came before us, and who else is out there?

Francisco Mendes Moreira (b. 1979) is a self-taught artist that lives and works in Lisbon. Over the last five years Moreira has gained a large following both online and through international exhibitions in the US, Europe and Australia. Recent group exhibitions include: ‘A Take on Paper’, Galleri KANT, Copenhagen (2019), and ‘Smuggling Vanilla’, Galerie 42b, Paris (2019), ‘Paper Cuts’, Saatchi Gallery, London 2018).