In “Gravitas”, the figure is captured in a suspended instant between ascent and collapse,
evoking the precise moment before flight when the body still remains bound to weight,
gravity, and the ground that resists its departure. The image unfolds through an unstable
fusion between human and bird-like presence, allowing the body to oscillate between
recognition and metamorphosis without ever fully stabilizing into a fixed identity. Rather
than depicting flight itself, the painting concentrates on the tension that precedes it, a state
of pendency in which movement exists only as potential.
The figure appears caught between emergence and disappearance, as if the act of
becoming airborne simultaneously threatened its own dissolution. The surrounding
atmosphere absorbs the body, blurring the distinction between figure and space, presence
and erosion. In this way, the painting transforms flight into something fragile and uncertain:
not a triumphant liberation, but a precarious negotiation between elevation and gravity,
impulse and restraint.
The title, Gravitas, reinforces this contradiction by invoking both physical weight and
emotional density. Gravity is not treated merely as a force that prevents ascension, but as
the very condition that gives tension and meaning to the possibility of flight. The image
sustains itself within this unresolved threshold, where the body remains suspended
between transformation and collapse, persistence and disappearance, never fully
departing and never entirely returning to stillness.
Tomás Toste (Açores, Portugal 1994) is a visual artist who lives and works between Lisbon
and Caldas da Rainha. Holds a degree in Fine Arts and Multimedia, as well as master’s
degrees in Design and Advertising from IADE and a second one in Fine Arts from
ESAD.CR. Alongside his artistic research, he works professionally as an Art Director in the
field of advertising, maintaining a parallel practice that navigates between visual
communication and contemporary painting.
Throughout his artistic trajectory, he has participated in several group exhibitions, notably
as part of the collective GRAVE 4 (2025) and the IV and V editions of Coletivo Corrente de
Ar (2024 and 2025). In the same period, he was included in the finalists’ exhibition of the
Bienal de Cerveira, selected as a finalist for the Mostra Nacional de Jovens Criadores, and
exhibited in other spaces such as Galeria São Mamede. In 2026, he was awarded the
Prémio Nova Vaga ’26, the José Mendonça Prize and won the Prospettive Prize at
Cremona Art Fair. At the same year began representation by Braço Perna 44. His work is
also featured in the collections of Angelo Di Bartolomeo, Paulo Amaro, Barza, Naranjas
con Arte, and Joaquim Ferro.
The artistic practice as a whole tends to develop around the figure and the image as
sensitive, unstable, and permeable phenomena, exploring the notion of pendency as a
condition of suspension, imbalance, and potential transformation. Through processes
rooted in gesture, accumulation, and erasure, the paintings approach the image as
something continuously oscillating between appearance and disappearance. In this sense,
the work resonates with the phenomenological understanding of a perception where the
visible is never fully presented but always emerging through the unstable relation between
body, gaze, and the world that surrounds it. The figurative image is therefore understood
not as a stable representation, but as an event in constant negotiation with matter, time,
and perception.
The surface of the painting becomes a space where forms hesitate between presence and
disappearance, retaining traces of gesture, erasure, and sedimentation. The paintings
engage with ideas proposed by Jean-Luc Nancy and Georges Bataille, feeding image to
exceed pure visibility and open itself to interruption, excess, and vulnerability. Painting
becomes less a space of affirmation than one of continual becoming, where the figurative
remains suspended between recognition and collapse, permanence and disappearance.