Sem título 1975

This untitled work was made by Menez in 1995, using what looks like watercolour or gouache on paper. The forms feel provisional, as if Menez is thinking through them in real time, building them up, knocking them down. The neutral palette is very grounded - lots of browns, blues and beiges that invite you to look closely. See how the white paint at the centre is applied quite thickly, it’s opaque in places, especially toward the bottom, where it almost looks like a crumpled piece of paper. And then it thins out, becoming more translucent as it rises, so that it almost disappears into the paler ground, like a ghost. There are some lines scratched into the white paint as well, which remind me of Cy Twombly, another artist who was interested in the intersection of writing and painting. This piece embraces a kind of openness, an invitation to project your own meanings onto its fluid shapes.