February 24th to March 17th, 2023
Exhibition view.. Photography: Heron P. Nogueira
SOLO EXHIBITION:
Heron P. Nogueira
TEXT:
Ana Grebler
About two years ago, Heron and I passed by each other in a narrow street, behind Santa Apolónia station, still strangers. This event was recognized a month ago, when we started the meetings to talk about O Amor e a Amizade (Love and Friendship), this exhibition. As often happens in the creative process, something happens, then you realize it. Sometimes you don't understand it, but you recognize it. Just like revisiting an old job that makes sense years later. Some perceptions are only the triggered from a sensorial stimulus that transports us to a consciousness. In this case, it was passing through the same street.
Chance animates the smallest parts of the universe: the twinkling of the stars is its power, a flower of the fields its enchantment. [1]
Heron paints comets [2], things that pass. He has the look of someone who knows that it is necessary to be attentive to what is not foreseen. His propositions in painting start from studies or become tasks - flowers, mirrors, thorns. There is method in its practice, together with the preparation of the material. Series developed from elements that reference, influence and circulate between them. Strokes that evoke Volpi or the Bow that becomes Snake Eye. In the repetition and transmutation of gesture and form, tensions created on aged surfaces present his work as an organism of invisible forces that determine it [3].
In O Amor e a Amizade, Heron sets himself a challenge. Starting with the choice of temper and the refusal of its usual ghost colors. To take a risk is to make the path less easy, but other windows are opened. Experimental and intimate, this exhibition is a meeting between relationships of his artistic production and affective relationships. Nostalgia, typical of the streets of Lisbon, is accentuated under the gaze of Heron, who explores photography as a language for the first time. Everyday scenes, places that pass by and people that stay. Or people who pass by and places that stay. Between a coffee and a cigarette, conversations about devotions of the soul and clouds of ignorance.
As in paintings, figure and background can be confused between analog noises and archaic techniques. Exposed with the photographs, the studies leave the place of exercise, highlighting the process and the interweaving between work and affection, inseparable in the sensitive path that involves the exhibition. Applied to the glass of the gallery, the bucolic landscape of a distant land and time, when Heron accompanied his father through the paths of the Brazilian cerrado. Among the memories that time devours, Love and Friendship deals with a vital emotion [4], in the sense of what crosses us and becomes decisive.
Stars in the dark are potent icons. Like biblical oracles. [5]
1 Bataille, Georges. O Pequeno. Sr Teste Edições, 2021. 2 Pintar cometas. Heron's master thesis, FBAUL, 2023 3 Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: Lógica da sensação. Orfeu Negro, 2011 4 Rolnik, Suely. Esferas da Insurreição. Sistema Solar, 2020 5 Prado, Adélia. Pensamentos à Janela; Tudo Que Existe Louvará. AssÃrio e Alvim, 2016
