The exhibition Echo/Eco: based on a true Story consolidates the close working relationship between curators de Oliveira & Oxley, and the artist Luis Paulo Costa. Held at Cristina Guerra Gallery in Lisbon, one of Portugal’s leading commercial galleries, it is a choreographed retrospective of the artist’s works disguised as a solo exhibition; it functions as a momentary staging of objects that are constantly in motion as they make their journey between the studio, museum, gallery, collection, reproduction and onwards. Each encounter and each contact adds experience, pulling the artwork out of the past into the present. An exhibition can either report or experiment – it may confirm something that is already known such as art historical facts, aesthetic continuity, artistic progression and so on; at other times, exhibitions may also challenge received ideas and examine the boundaries of a practice.

            Though Costa’s output has included sculpture, photography, video, digital imagery and installation, his is essentially the work of a painter, a realisation that becomes abundantly clear in this exhibition. Regardless of material attributes, the sharp painter’s eye always shapes the work, an Occam’s razor that peels through the layers of replayed images, in an attempt to depict the world, not as it is, but as it should be.