Martins&Montero presents Thanateros: img_abstruction_666.gif, a solo exhibition by artist Deyson Gilbert. The title intertwines the mythological figures of Thanatos and Eros—personifications of death and eroticism, respectively—into a single conceptual body. From the fusion of these impulses emerges the term abstruction, a hybrid word that, originating from an occult root, proposes an intersection of four possibilities: abstraction, obstruction, construction and destruction.
Within this territory, Gilbert presents a series of sculptures that challenge notions of balance and untouched gesture. His iron pieces, assembled through provisional joints and precarious arrangements, reveal a palpable physical and formal tension. Each sculpture, seemingly abstract, gains figuration through its title—abandoning mute formality to suggest an image. Thus, they resonate on both semantic and formal levels, inhabiting space with an alluring and injurious elegance.
In his collages, the artist revisits the geometric constructivist tradition not through chromatic exploration, but via a body of images—images that lacerate, provoke, and compete for attention. Here, figuration and abstraction engage in a dialectical clash, where eroticism and violence become indistinguishable. Worked through an implicit obscenity, these images—sourced from war, erotica, and abstraction—operate through a strange seduction via repulsion.
A potential conceptual axis of the exhibition is the triad Flesh–Lead–Image, which seems to haunt the works throughout. This triad, which recurs like a material refrain, cuts across the pieces and shapes their affective resonance. Together, flesh, lead, and image form a kind of showcase of the materials used by the artist.
In one of the works presented, a live chicken occupies the gallery space. Its presence conjures the specter of ritual and engages in an experimental exercise involving instructions and imaginative play. Here, flesh, lead, and image reappear not as objects or materials, but as evocative forces.
Thanateros: img_abstruction_666.gif displays its constructivist pulse and, in the intimacy between art and critique, develops the idea of abstraction as a formative value in contemporary society, especially with regard to love and hate in the times of digital hubris. Desire and finitude encounter each other not as opposing forces but as accomplices. The exhibition unfolds as a field of symbolic operations, where eroticism and death—language and matter—are confronted and contaminated by one another.