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Established in 2010 and consolidated in its present form in 2013, Underdogs works with a diversified roster of Portuguese and international artists connected with the urban inspired contemporary art universe, fostering the development of close relationships between creators, the public, and the city with the aim of promoting art as an everyday experience.
Maps of Meaning unfolds as an alchemical rite of language, a space where words are dismantled, reassembled, and reborn through form. Each piece begins with an anagram, a deliberate act of linguistic mutation in which meaning slips, fractures, and recombines.
In this process, language is the starting point, a field of possibilities in which the viewer is invited to choose what to see and to construct their own meaning. It is not a fixed code, but an open threshold.
As the transformation unfolds, materials such as metal, wood, clay, mirror, neon, and LED become active agents in thought, not merely mediums but extensions of the cognitive process. They participate in the mutation of language: hardening, reflecting, illuminating, grounding, or distorting the words that pass through them. Thus, language becomes both material and metaphor: a living structure that reveals the instability of meaning and the endless potential for transformation — an ongoing alchemy where matter thinks and words become flesh.
BOOK PRESENTATION WITH THE ARTIST 15 January 2026 at the gallery
