SOPHIE TAPPEINER introduces the gallery’s program for the first time in Lisbon, in the context of Madragoa HOTEL. Madragoa HOTEL is a new initiative by Galeria Madragoa, inviting international galleries to occupy the space at Rua do Machadinho 45.

The group exhibition Ebbing Touch encompasses sculpture, painting, and drawing, which engage in questions of materiality, texture and form. The works presented deal with tactile engagement and bodily experiences.

Angelika Loderer’s sculptures Superspira I and Superspira II capture a moment of transformation in the process of creation and cast. Wave-like, undulating ebbing lines on the sculpture’s surface come from layers and layers of wax covering a body - hands. The thus created abstract form is then cast in aluminum.

Like Loderer, Irina Lotarevich also used hands - her own hands – as a starting point for her two works: the fluctuating traces of caresses and memories of silk, wool, velvet. The titles derive from Michel Serres’ philosophical essay on human senses. Rather than covering her entire hand, she makes silicon molds of her palm and then enlarges the thus created surface, zooming on her pores and the lines of her palms. Cast in melted metal material from former sculptures, which have neither emotional, nor artistic or economic value to her, her rectangular objects are oscillating between the solidity of sculpture and the softness of drawing.

Rindon Johnson’s featured work You have a magnet under your skin? Her head, shaven, dusted with powder, the food was extraordinary, endless, laden, let me interrupt you: Why cling to the shame? uses furniture grade cowhide, a byproduct from industrial beef production, as a carrier for his drawing. This way, Johnson reflects on the byproduct as a broader historical and conceptual condition.

Made out of a white net covered in latex bound to a black metal tube mounted on a metal chain, Liesl Raff’s untitled work hangs gently moving from the ceiling. The assemblage of materials creates a contrast between the ingenious upper and the soft, almost diaphanous lower part of her sculpture, resembling empty vessels or a deflated lung with a surface evoking fish scales.

ur shadows (Reflection of a Landscape), a new work by Kyle Thurman, appears as a cinematic fever dream or a hallucinatory passage pulled from a diary. This piece incorporates recurring themes from Thurman’s practice – masks, shadows, coin-like shapes – that engage with themes of masculine identities, intimacy and conditioned violence.