Interval
20.06.2020
31.07.2020

The exhibition highlights a common dimension to the work of the four artists: the time or, to be more specific, the pause. Here they show the relevance of the gesture’s expressiveness, how important are its intervals and how ilimited are the possibilities for the work of art in its final form and in terms of substance and shape.

The sculptures by Bruno Cidra (Lisbon, 1982) and Vera Mota (Porto, 1982) appear to be about to move, as dancers. With Vera Mota’s sculptures, we move our eyes through them in a movement which jumps from one to another. This may happen due to the nature of her own gesture, acknowledged by a singular repetition effort to respond to the whims of the matter and to its mysteries. As we recognize the drawing gesture embedded in the sculptures, it becomes visible the way time shapes them. We may see it through the black iron dashes over the gallery wall, or in the clear and thick stain-lines on the floor that we are forced to surround, more closely or with a certain distance, while reacting to what the work itself requires from us.

The laws of time become evident through the act of drawing, more than through any other way of working in the field of visual arts. Just look at Marco Franco’s (Lisbon, 1972) drawings and his gestures: sometimes firm, sometimes long and smooth, sometimes short, but exhaustively repeated and requalified by the understanding that he himself gets from the work; and sometimes even unique because of the impossibility of repetition or due to the absolute enjoyment that leads the artist to simply stop the movement.

However, there’s an even more abstract way of drawing. A way that amplifies the connection between the works, here brought to us by Tiago Miranda (Guimarães, 1975). In his sound drawing, the sounds repeat themselves over and over again, evolving and changing their tone and length. The sound needs us and the record player as vehicles to exist, though it is always waiting for an ignition.

All the works are on hold and moving at the same time. It is their nature: they pause as well as they move. That is what connects them. It is the way they have to show us that rhythm is the source for the aesthetic work and that its materiality, although singular, is plural, ilimited.

Maria Joana Vilela