Painel continued its ongoing proposition of enabling dialogue between people with different interests and practices, through a shared denominator, a word extracted from a phrase gradually revealed across the project. Using the word “matou” as its starting point, the exhibition brought together the work of two recently graduated designers, Nuno Maio and Sílvia Reis, whose narrative approach explored the tension between ruin and the digital

Using the word “matou” as a motif, an exhibition was proposed focusing on the work of two newly graduated designers, Nuno Maio and Sílvia Reis, who, through narrative development, present an installation-based approach exploring the dichotomy between ruin and the digital.
When something is a shadow of a faded reality, contamination occurs. This contamination is produced by the realities we choose to construct—utopias contained within the spectrum of humanity’s ability to idealize.
TECHNOLOGY – RENAISSANCE suggests minuscule possibilities for construction and progress, indispensable tools in the modern digital condition. It enables creation within a spiritual space of thought. However, this excess of information and visual matter leads to a decline in our ability to move forward, a constant saturation that induces despair—the deep speculation that nearly annihilates convictions. It infects the purest thoughts of life, trapping us in the relentless distress of seeking authenticity.
We see in this technological renaissance a stolen reality, a mirror in which we believe we see a window of infinite possibilities. A deceptive construction of everything we absorb, a struggle to find points of clarity, fueling chaos and stirring the currents of a manipulated world.
In the pursuit of values grounded in legitimacy, free from external corruption, the moment when these two planes meet at opposing poles and merge, centralizing into one, we achieve the PHENOMENON – FICTION. Not what has died, nor what is new, but the fusion of what is indulgent—the exemplary and pure combination of both materials. The connection of improbable relationships, a new paradigmatic identity, balancing content and form, born from the catharsis of these two worlds.
A harmonious phenomenon between ruin and digital—a dissimulated reality.
Nuno Maio and Sissas Reis
Galeria Painel, 2016