The exhibition Penumbra, presented by Dialogue Gallery at the premises of the storied Graça Brandão Gallery in the historic centre of Lisbon, brings together the work of Luís Paulo Costa and Tatiana Macedo; his practice is primarily associated with painting, with an approach that underlines the medium’s conceptual roots, while her work comprises film, photography and sound informed by a conflation of a critical, anthropological methodology. Both practices share, in their own distinct way, a haptic compulsion: works that result from the author’s touch, which applies, tends, indicates, and erases by turns.

Architecture is not a neutral space since it ‘both constructs and instructs us’[1] and the site of an exhibition always has a powerful hold over its exhibits and how we view them. The title of the exhibition refers to the effect of darkness, to an atmosphere created by the scarcity of light, and to the transition from light to darkness. It is penumbra that sets the physical conditions of the show, while also serving as a metaphor to support its interpretation.