I recently visited the beautiful exhibition of Portuguese painter Gabriel Garcia in the Espaco Exhibitionista gallery in Lisbon.

The title of the exhibition is “Who throws the First Rock”, which was presented in golden letters on a wooden table, with stones around- a beautiful moment in itself. I liked how this added a three-dimensional piece to the exhibition who was otherwise only paintings on the walls.

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Two walls presented really large paintings of men hiding their faces in hoodies or ties in a rather desperate move, hiding or maybe punishing themselves in some ways.

The stones were present on the ground of the paintings.

I was even more affected by another series of mid size paintings showing a disrupted narrative, hands washing themselves in a sink for example. A very simple gesture, but given the title of the exhibition and the dark tone of the paintings, they seem to be washing off a sin.

The whole back wall was occupied by a double row of very small oil paintings.

They seemed to be painted from very different snapshots, of domestic scenes, of terrorist attacks, of someone longingly looking through a window. At first glance they were rather usual scenes from images I would feel frequently confronted with. Looking longer, I was taken by a very dark feeling though. All the paintings have a heavy, desperate, given up or aggressive tone.

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I liked that the stories here remain so unclear, that we as viewers have to add our own imagination to complete the narrative. There is a certain despair in the paintings that I felt uncomfortable feeling, at the same time as I admire how Garcia manages to make me feel so strongly.

As an artist I was pleased to see the red dots of “sold” on almost all the paintings, which felt encouraging.