Picturesque, eccentric, famed, friendly, Lisbon is a unique cultural gem. While here on a curatorial project, I asked one of the artists I was working with, Luís Almeida, which is the one gallery I must see while in Lisbon. His response: Galeria 111.

        “Open me: Miguel Ângelo Rocha” is closing in two days so it’s now or never to get over to Galleria 111. A quick Bolt ride (like Uber) from our hotel to an exhibition of mostly large scale, assembled sculptures spread out along walls and floors like otherworldly octopi, the exhibition feels world class and powerful. The works are composed of extra thick to thin plywood cut into shapes that appear arbitrary, wire, hefty wood dowels, beeswax, clothing, and thick braided rope like I haven’t seen since high school gym class, and are all inexplicably situated in space.

        All of the sculptures initially come off as puzzling and profound. Matthew Barney and Josef Beuys immediately come to mind here, based on the rugged versus intimate rawness of each work. Using a limited color palette of yellows, light browns, white and gray, Miguel Ângelo Rocha’s (Lisbon, Portugal, 1964) enigmatic sculptures manage an extensive range of shifting segues loaded with visual effects, conjectured motion, and slippery narratives that lean toward complex emotion, while the visceral effect hits more in the brain than the gut.

        For instance, in Accattone 1 1/2 (2025), the narrative hinges on the two gaping yellow holes in the center of stuffed supine shirts accompanied by a foreboding yellow cape-like form that commands from above. Are we witnessing the theft of souls orchestrated by a dominant being? Behind all this are two white shirted, headless sentries that intensify the drama of what reads as an unstoppable ritualistic setting. Conversely, the winding white 3D bands that spread out like untamed wings on both sides of the composition give off a more psycho-spiritual feel, connecting the narrative to ancient, hallucinogenic states of ritual. Accattone, which is also the title of a classic 1961 film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, portrays a pimp who ends up on skid row, eventually becoming a beggar. Is this the artist’s intended reference? Possibly. However, the tension or angst of aggressively altered states seems far more otherworldly.

        In Envelope (2025), there are reverberations of the influence of Modern Art represented in the middle by a classic wooden, abstract assemblage, versus the two flanking clusters of yellow balls reminiscent of some of the decorative elements at the National Palace of Pena that, in this instance, imply Conceptual Art. This battle of the titans is set against two-way pointing polyester fabric (a fully open envelope?), as the three main elements offer no concrete conclusions. As I observe gallery goers, I see more gravitation toward the sides of this vast composition due to the familiarity of the rounded and repeating forms than any lasting connection to the central element. Conversely, to my eye, the central object that recalls the heyday of Modernism takes the cake due to its quiet confidence of what it stands for.

        On an adjacent wall is Station 2 – Anchor (2024), which looks like the violent unraveling of a powerful spirit presence released from a flayed open body as it breaks away from unwanted containment. The addition of a pooling galvanized chain that collects on the ground, the backing of a spread open straight jacket at the back and the absurdly long crutch that yields to the floor, bending outward, all create an extraordinary escape to freedom on both atomic and multiverse levels.

        A bit of humor breaks through in Station 5 – Open Me (2025) where a very abstract, flagrantly extrapolated face of a woman wearing a wildly broad smile, albeit crazed, takes note of us bystanders. Perhaps this is the way many of us feel today, somewhat or very paranoid as we experience an out-of-control world that is well beyond fair and compassionate.

        Around the corner from Galeria 111 is the institution CAMB—Centro de Arte Manuel de Brito, where the collection accrued by Galleria 111 and Manuel de Brito, who founded Galeria 111 in 1964, displays works from their collection. Today, the paintings, prints, animated films and mixed media works of Eduardo Luiz (Braga, Portugal, 1932-88) are featured in an impressive survey of meticulously rendered art.

        As noted in Maria Arlete Alves da Silva’s essay, Luiz was the consummate outlier. Disheartened and bitter about the state of humanity, the foibles of politics, and the art world at that time, Luiz fought back with his own unique brand of Trompe L’Oeil where actual objects and a slightly stylized type of precision painting created stunning compositions.

        Luiz’s feeling about the way in which his art was received by critics and the general public can be summed up in one pointed composition, where 3-D facsimiles of fecal matter is served up on a doily in Homenagem a um Critico (1966). This work, which needs no explanation, is a treatise on his anger, a need for revenge and mad self-aggrandizement that pretty much derailed his career. It is also a clear illustration of the artist’s overall temperament, which is characterized by Silva as “Intransigent, confrontational, sarcastic, ironic, theatrical, he sometimes violently hurt those around him.” Or as Eduardo Luiz suggested, he was like “a loose stone on a sidewalk,” which in Lisbon is saying a lot. With all this said, Luiz’s art remains today as a symbol of sticktoitiveness, to an artist with a particular vision that never wavered despite all the negative hubbub.

        On the first day of my trip to Portugal, when I was on my way to Braco Perna 44 to help install an exhibition, I came across AINORI Contemporary Art Gallery’s engaging display. The exhibition, “Across the open field,” is a 20+ year survey of Rui Hermenegildo’s (Mozambique, 1976) analog photography where the artist’s very diverse aesthetic and intent is immediately apparent. Displayed in one row of color and black and white prints around a clean, intimate space, the uniquely varied and offbeat subject matter suggests a very organic approach. One photograph taken in the outskirts of the Warsaw Ghetto in Germany that says a lot about Hermenegildo’s ever-changing narrative path is Olympia (2025). As a commentary on age, beauty versus self-love; life imagined and lost; Olympia has the feeling of classic detachment from one’s life decisions made and mourned. Olympia, as many will know, is a subject most famously portrayed by the French Impressionist Édouard Manet with very different results, giving this work’s even more strangeness. Irony is in much of Hermenegildo’s photographs, ranging from the dreamlike to the dead-on, it’s all very focused and arresting.

        Three very different gallery exhibitions from the top of the market, through past controversy, to a smart upstart gallery, the art scene in hilly Lisbon is well worth the effort.

D. Dominick Lombardi is a visual artist, art writer, and curator. Currently, Lombardi is participating in two group exhibitions in Portugal titled “Fingindo ou Fingimento (Pretending).” The first opened at Braço Perna 44 in Lisbon on October 30 and runs through November 29. The second opened at Atelier Ghostbirds in Caldas da Rainha on November 8 and closes in January of 2026.