Galerie légitime #2

Davis Lisboa, Galerie légitime #2, 2013. Oil on linen, 40 × 40 × 3.5 cm (15.75 × 15.75 × 1.38 in)

As part of The Paintings Section from Davis Museum, Galerie légitime #2 extends Davis Lisboa’s sustained inquiry into the museum understood as image, structure, and conceptual form. Conceived within the framework of Davis Museum Barcelona—an artist-founded institution operating simultaneously as exhibition space, archive, and readymade—the work situates painting within a broader reflection on the conditions of display and circulation.

The title refers to La Galerie Légitime by Robert Filliou, placing the work within a genealogy of artist-conceived institutions that extends from Marcel Duchamp, with La Boîte-en-valise, to Marcel Broodthaers, with Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles. In this context, the painting reflects an ongoing investigation into alternative museological formats, understood not as fixed structures but as portable, critical, and self-defined systems.

Formally, the work draws on the blurred pictorial language associated with Gerhard Richter. Developed from a photographic source translated into paint, the image is articulated through softened contours and controlled instability, suspending representation between presence and erasure. The square format and the use of oil on linen reinforce the work’s formal concentration and structural clarity.

Produced in 2013, Galerie légitime #2 belongs to a body of work in which painting becomes a site for rethinking the museum as both aesthetic proposition and institutional gesture.

The James Dacre Collection, London, UK.