April 23th to May 14th 2021
Exhibition view.. Photography: Susana Rocha
GROUP EXHIBITION:
Catarina Silva, Constança Arouca. Francisca Carvalho, Hugo Bernardo, Nuno Henrique, Pedro Calhau e Roger Paulino
TEXT:
Carolina Quintela
Les Amis du Cadavre exquis brings together a very diverse and multidisciplinary group of seven plastic artists who present unprecedented work between drawing, painting, sculpture and installation. It is also based on the long friendship that unites them and, also inseparable from the current context, we can say that it is a celebratory exhibition, thought and prepared from a distance.
Art, as a primordial soul force, is the converging and unifying motive of these artists who come together in their scope, seeking, under the same motto, new meanings through the intersection of their artistic practices and individual specific processes, thus enabling a dialogue about discourses activated by affinities and sharing the same place, an extensive desire for the creation of common space and, above all, the collective dynamics on the various challenges of contemporaneity.
Having become known in Portugal as Cadaver Esquisito, the surrealist collective game invented around 1925 in France, Les Amis du Cadavre exquis, gives the exhibition its name. It was characterized by being a device for the production of automatic drawings and discrepant languages, however complementary, as well as conventional literary discourses that were subverted, revealing, consequently, a very particular humor.
Based on this assumption, this exhibition is anchored in a conceptual relationship provided by the presentation of the set of works with no obvious or apparent connection between them. This happy meeting and the symbolic composition suggested by the title, reaffirms the accumulative and generative process, as well as the poetic dimension of the unexpected and the unknown. As a collection of metaphorical signs, the works appear in an unusual way as well as affective and complementary. The individual expression is reconciled with the collective expression in a common echo and that we can see present in the sculptural objects in glass later painted by the artist Hugo Bernardo, which function as meta-reflections, resulting from in-depth studies on anamorphic distortions, here in the form of heads. floating, and that transport us and remind us of the complexity and imagery mutability in the temporal crossing of primitive archaeological signs; the artist Catarina Silva appropriates the binary language, which she inscribes in a raw fabric and, in an encrypted and subtle way, creates messages about this divinatory and evocative object, explaining the potential of beliefs about chance and luck. starting from a drawing.
As a preparatory work that carries over from a previous exhibition, the photogravure by Constança Arouca appears which, engraved and printed using a procedure similar to monotype, expands in the continuity of the work she has been developing. As a form of resistance to the distance imposed in these current troubled times, the artist gives us the chance to know what she has been doing in an exercise of sharing between friends. The imaginary cartographies, geography and infographics of Pedro Calhau, along with the word, referring to the text About the sources of knowledge and ignorance (1960) by Karl Pooper that he cites, places us in the illusory surprise and in the spontaneous movement in which the value of borders , from his “drawings/map” seems to dissipate, behave and converge. Francisca Carvalho paints, through plant and mineral pigments on natural fabric, the organic gesture and the artist Roger Paulino, also summons the gesture through the action of the public, who invites to participate, making his drawing a performative drawing and for everyone, responding to a question that poses: “How to make a drawing without being present?”. Nuno Henrique emphasizes the value of mysticism and iconography through small-scale objects, on paper, built with absolute rigor by stereotomy.
Here, ideally, everything is subject to transformation, everything can occupy new places and meanings, permanent exchange is the most important thing, and this exhibition can and should also lead us to question what thoughts and actions lead to the creation of our foundation itself. Art has this essential role and an exhibition, temporary and unrepeatable, is made of generosity and availability for connections, for sharing and must have the intention of being a space that activates transformative movements.
Through the aesthetic experience, through the encounter with works of art, each one builds himself, artist and observer. We define ourselves through objects and the richness of the individual being in which its uniqueness is defined, requires its recreation through the possible artistic connections, to which it has access, in the relationship with the world.
Exploring a wide multiplicity of languages and plastic sensibilities, Les Amis du Cadavre exquis, seeks to present new paths and experiences present in the strength of the contrasts that define and potentiate them; they are the temporal dimension, the imaginary, the gesture and mysticism, some of the subjects that accompany the exhibition.
Through the aesthetic experience, through the encounter with works of art, each one builds himself, artist and observer. We define ourselves through objects and the richness of the individual being in which its uniqueness is defined, requires its recreation through the possible artistic connections, to which it has access, in the relationship with the world.
Exploring a wide multiplicity of languages and plastic sensibilities, Les Amis du Cadavre exquis seeks to present new paths and experiences present in the strength of the contrasts that define and potentiate them; they are the temporal dimension, the imaginary, the gesture and mysticism, some of the subjects that accompany the exhibition. Maybe it's important to look at the art. Thus, hovering in unrepeatable moments in an immense circular movement in which the artistic objects are the crack, the key and the detail that reassures us that there is always more after the end.
