Conversation with Joana Vasconcelos

The art of transfiguring objects

Since the onset of her career, Joana Vasconcelos (Paris, 1971) has devoted her production to re-examining the notions of creation and authorship and is, ultimately, known for “recycling” everyday objects in her creations. Vasconcelos’ production analyse the human sphere, communities, interpersonal relationships; between individuals and social groups. “Are pots typical of a Portuguese ethnography”, asks the artist, “No! How about plastic cutlery” No! They are common cultural products; they are the consciously ignored items of our everyday life.” Thus, instead of using raw materials, Vasconcelos works with pre-existing objects – which have already circulated in the cultural market – to create objects informed by other objects.

French curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud, in his book Postproduction. La culture comme scénario: commente l’art reprogramme le monde contemporain (Post-Production: Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World, 2001), proposes that the notions of originality (being at the origin of) and creation (composing something from nothing) are about to merge in an activity called “post-production.” The mixes crafted by DJS, manipulating and introducing new transitions in pre-existing flows of sound-based information, are the quintessential example of this contemporary cultural context. DJS use fragments of previously recorded tracks to create new compositions. “A DJ takes a song from the history of music and creates a new composition which is, also, inscribed in a new musical category. I do not turn to other people’s artworks, but I do use banal objects that we all employ in our everyday life,” says Joana Vasconcelos.

How does your work method differ from a DJ’s
DJS mix one thing with another to obtain a new musical product that is, nevertheless, linked to the original product. I do not do mixes. I depart from a common object, a shoe, pots, objects that no one owns, ordinary objects, not designer pieces or pieces with a specific historical trajectory. In the candlestick [the artwork Néctar, from 2006, made with iron and wine bottles], for instance, I worked with common bottles. The candlestick itself is the notion of an object, it is based on a conventional concept but manufactured using peculiar materials that turn it into something else, removing it from its original historical setting. Therefore, the end result is the design of a new concept for a regular object which in people’s minds is only conceived as a conventional object. I do not mix components, I do not alter their physiognomy, identity or meaning, nor do I turn them into something else. I transform common preconceived ideas about specific objects.

In other words, you appropriate objects from the common imagery and grant them another purpose, but always referring to their original properties…
My works transform the idea physically and simultaneously create a specific individuality. Everything overlaps and juxtaposes. I do not destroy, mutilate or alter them. I do not change their identity. Quite the contrary. I affirm the identity of each of the objects. None of them are created using a mix. That is one of my trademarks. On the other hand, I do not work with elements that have a strong identity. I prefer objects whose meaning is more open; things that are more common and allow me to give them a different identity, to “personalise” them. The objects seemingly lose their original identity to acquire a unique one. For instance, the “Viana heart” [a traditional Portuguese jewel that women wear as a good luck charm when they get married which Vasconcelos reproduces in her enormous Coração Independente Dourado, 2004, using painted iron and covered in plastic] is a trivial object made with paltry objects that, nevertheless, end us becoming a high-end, luxury jewel. By making the Viana heart out of plastic cutlery I aimed to make a futile object, a banality.

How do you alter the objects you work with
I destroy pre-established concepts, I question the legitimacy of what is institutionalised and topple the imposed order. I want to bring the private into the public sphere, or the public into the private sphere, and extract elements from a low social level to introduce them into an elevated sphere. When conceptual paradigms are altered and the disposition of the sensitive reality is shifted, people start to question things: Can the intricacy of Viana de Castelo, usually made in gold or silver, be transformed into plastic? Then they wonder if that synthetic object merits being classed as a luxury product, because luxury is linked to scarce materials. Suddenly, the object becomes a symbol of luxury precisely because it is made of plastic. Essentially that allows us to escape from imposed conceptual ghettos and makes art more democratic, more accessible. I work with massification, with the notion that everything is consumed. Therefore, I favour products that are less valuable, objects that are used by a greater amount of people and I transform them into luxury pieces, thereby shifting their financial value completely. In other words, I go from the supermarket to the museum.

Your objects question the standardisations established by social norms…
They question the main “value” of contemporary culture: consumerism. Aspirins [Sofá Aspirina, 1997, a seat made using aspirin blister packs] and valium [Cama Valium, 1998, a bead made using valium blister packs] criticise the consumption of medicine, of drugs. People very rarely consider excess when they consume, be it alcohol, medicine, clothes… We consume it all in a very surprising manner. My works are fuelled by everything the world consumes. We do not think we “consume” pots or tampons, but in fact, the least socially valued objects, the most banal or common items, are actually the most “consumed,” even though only expensive and special things are considered valuable. Aspirins are probably the most consumed drug in the world. All I am doing is underlining that common fact, which is something people are not used to. However, they are used to t-shirts reading “I want an aspirin” or “Give me a tampon.” Compulsive consumerism is much more frequently connected to vulgar objects than to luxury articles.

What position does your art occupy in the contemporary context?
In a way it has been very interesting to live with that particularity: to see how people are shocked when faced with their own banality and they are prompted to grant special value to common objects like plastic cutlery, pots, tampons, ceramic animals, ties, dusters or blister packs. Trendy women see the shoe [the piece Priscilla, 2007, made with stainless steel pots and lids] as a designer item, but women who are more focused on family, on the traditional aspects of Portuguese society – who cook, etc. – establish other associations and notice the different sizes of the pots and pans. Few manage to combine both elements to come up with a different interpretation. They see one thing or the other, they are not interested in establishing analogies or anything. Therefore, my art deals with being between luxury and banality; with inhabiting a new space. I want to create a different field that I can intervene in, without criticising or refuting it; a preliminary place. My artworks trigger questions about our everyday decisions and assertions.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXIX, Núm. 259/260 (112-121), February/March 2010 España. Joana Vasconcelos, Coração independente dourado, 2004. © DMF, Lisboa; Priscilla (2007), Sofá Aspirina (1997). Courtesy Luís Vasconcelos, Lisboa; Cama Valium, 1998. Courtesy Atelier Joana Vasconcelos, Lisboa. Translation: Laura F. Farhall.

Conversación con Joana Vasconcelos

La arte de transfigurar los objetos

Desde el inicio de su carrera, las obras de Joana Vasconcelos (Paris, 1971), reexaminan las nociones de creación y autoría y, de forma singular, se caracterizan por el “reciclaje” de objetos de uso cotidiano en obras de arte. Los trabajos de Joana Vasconcelos tratan de la esfera humana, de las relaciones interpersonales; de los individuos tanto como de los grupos sociales. “¿Son las ollas etnografía portuguesa? – se plantea esta artista – ¡No! ¿Y los cubiertos de plástico? ¡Tampoco! Son productos culturales de uso corriente, son las formas conscientemente ignoradas do nuestra vida diaria”. Así, en lugar de elaborar formas a partir de materiales en estado primario, Vasconcelos trabaja con objetos preexistentes, que han circulado ya en el mercado cultural, creando de esta forma objetos informados por otros objetos.

El curador y crítico de arte francés Nicolas Bourriaud, en su libro Postproduction. La culture comme scénario: comment l’art reprogramme le monde contemporain (Postproducción. La cultura como escenario: cómo el arte reprograma el mundo contemporáneo, 2001), defiende que las nociones de originalidad (estar en el origen de) y de creación (configurar cualquier cosa de la nada) están a punto de diluirse en una actividad de “postproducción”. Las mezclas realizadas por los DJS, al manipular e introducir nuevas transiciones en los flujos de información sonora preexistentes, serían el ejemplo por excelencia de este contexto cultural contemporáneo. El DJ utiliza fragmentos de canciones grabadas previamente para hacer nuevas composiciones. “Un DJ extrae una canción de la historia de la música y crea una nueva composición al mismo tiempo que la inscribe en una nueva categoría musical. Yo no rebusco en las obras de arte de otros, pero sí en los objetos banales de nuestra vida diaria”, afirma Joana Vasconcelos.

¿Cuál sería la diferencia entre su forma de proceder y la de un DJ?Los DJS mezclan una cosa con otra y el resultado es un nuevo producto musical relacionado con los anteriores. Yo no hago mezclas. Más bien parto de un objeto común, un zapato o unas cazuelas, objetos que no son de nadie, que son de uso normal, no de autor ni con trayectoria histórica en sí. En el candelero [la obra Néctar, de 2006, realizada con hierro y botellas de vino], por ejemplo. Se puede observar que las botellas son de lo más comunes. En candelero en sí es en realidad la idea de un objeto, sigue un concepto tipo, y está fabricado con unos materiales peculiares que lo convierten en una cosa distinta, que se sale de su marco histórico original. De este modo, lo que se consigue es el diseño de un nuevo concepto para ese objeto de uso que en la cabeza de la gente solo es concebido como un objeto tipo. Yo no mezclo los componentes, no altero su fisonomía, su identidad o su sentido, ni los transformo en otra cosa. Lo que transformo son las ideas preconcebidas comunes en relación con determinados objetos.

¿En otras palabras, usted se apropia de objetos que pertenecen al imaginario común, y los dota de otra finalidad, haciendo referencia, sin embargo, a sus propiedades originales…
Mis obras transforman la idea físicamente y de modo simultáneo crean una individualidad específica. Todo se sobrepone, se yuxtapone. No las destruyo, no las mutilo ni las altero, no cambio su identidad. Al contrario, lo que hago es afirmar la identidad de cada uno de los objetos, que no son producto de una mezcla. Esta es una característica de mi trabajo. Por otra parte, tampoco me dedico a buscar cosas con una identidad demasiado marcada. Busco cosas con un sentido más abierto, que son comunes y a las que puedo conferir una identidad distinta, “personalizándolas”. Es como si esos objetos perdieran su identidad original para adquirir una singular. Por ejemplo, el “corazón de Viana” [joya tradicional portuguesa utilizada por las mujeres para atraer la suerte al matrimonio y que Vasconcelos reproduce en su gran Coração independente dourado, 2004, utilizando hierro pintado y cubiertos de plástico] es un objeto trivial construido con objetos baladíes, y, sin embargo, acaba siendo una especie de joya muy lujosa. Al realizar este corazón de Viana con cubiertos de plástico pretendía construir un objeto fútil, una banalidad.

¿Cómo se opera esta alteración?
Se trata de destruir conceptos preestablecidos, deslegitimando aquello que está institucionalizado y desarticulando el orden impuesto. Se trata de hacer saltar lo privado al ámbito público, o bien introducir lo público en lo privado, y extraer elementos de una nivel social bajo para introducirlos en otro más elevado. Cuando se alteran los paradigmas conceptuales y se trastoca la disposición de la realidad sensible, la gente se cuestiona acerca de lo que es sensato: la filigrana que se trabaja en Viana de Castelo, de oro o de plata, ¿transformada en plástico? Luego se llega a plantear si ese objeto sintético merece ser considerado como un producto de lujo. Porque el lujo está asociado a ciertos tipos de materiales categorizados principalmente por su rareza. De repente aquel objeto se convierte en símbolo del lujo precisamente por estar hecho de plásticos. El resultado esencial es que así logramos escapar de los guetos conceptuales impuestos y el arte se democratiza, se amplía el acceso a él. Mi trabajo está relacionado con la masificación, con la idea de que todo se consume. Así que busco los productos de menos valor que consume un mayor número de personas y los transformo en piezas de lujo, cuyo valor económico se ubica en el extremo opuesto. Es decir, paso del hipermercado al museo.

Sus objetos cuestionan las tipificaciones establecidas por las normas sociales...
Cuestionan el principal “valor” de la cultura actual: el del consumismo. Las aspirinas [Sofá Aspirina, 1997, un asiento realizado con blísteres de aspirinas] y la cama de valium [Cama Valium, 1998, realizado con blísteres de pastillas de valium] critican el consumo de medicamento, de drogas. La gente consume cuestionándose muy raramente el exceso de consumo, ya sea de alcohol, de medicamentos, de ropa… Lo consumimos todo de una forma sorprendente. Mis obras se nutren de lo que todo el mundo consume. No consideramos que “consumimos” ollas o tampones, sin embargo son los objetos menos valorados socialmente, los más banales, corrientes, los que más se “consumen”, aunque solo se conceda valor a lo caro y especial. La aspirina es probablemente el medicamento más consumido del mundo. Lo único que hago es señalar este hecho común, y es a esto a lo que la gente no está habituada. Sí lo está, por ejemplo, a que se inscriba en una camiseta leyendas como “Quiero una aspirina” o “Dame un tampón”. El consumismo compulsivo se da mucho más en relación con objetos vulgares que con los de lujo.

¿Qué sitio piensas que ocupan sus obras en el contexto contemporáneo?
De alguna manera ha sido muy interesante vivir con esta particularidad: ver la sorpresa que manifiestan las personas cuando se las enfrenta a su propia banalidad y se ven en la tesitura de conceder valor a objetos de uso común, como los cubiertos de plástico, las ollas, los tampones, los animales de loza, las corbatas, los plumeros o los blísteres de pastillas. En el zapato [la obra Priscilla, 2007, hecho con cacerolas y tapas de acero inoxidable], las mujeres que gustan de la moda ven un zapato de diseño, mientras que aquellas que dan más valor a la familia, a los aspectos tradicionales de la sociedad portuguesa – que, por ejemplo, cocinan y demás –, establecen otro tipo de asociaciones y se fijan más en los diferentes tamaños de los cazos y cacerolas. Son pocas las que consiguen juntar todos los elementos y hacer otra interpretación. Solo se inclinan a ver una cosa o la otra, sin mostrarse interesadas en establecer analogías o algo similar. Se trata, pues, de permanecer entre el lujo y lo banal, en un nuevo espacio, un campo distinto en el que puedo intervenir, sin criticar ni desmentir, un sitio liminar. Mis obras funcionan como un ignición que pone en tela de juicio nuestras decisiones y afirmaciones cotidianas.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXIX, Núm. 259/260 (112-121), February/March 2010 España. Joana Vasconcelos, Coração independente dourado, 2004. © DMF, Lisboa; Priscilla (2007), Néctar (2006), Sofá Aspirina (1997). Courtesy Luís Vasconcelos, Lisboa. Traducción: Javier Bautista Vázquez.

Jane and Louise Wilson: Suspending Time

Centro de Arte Moderna da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon)
Jane and Louise Wilson: Suspending Time

Jane and Louise Wilson’s work tends to distort modern principles, those in particular related with the “form follows function” concept. This concern is translated into black and white photos (Sealander, 2006) about the abandoned bunkers, such as the defensive fortification – Atlantic Wall – created by the German troops during the Second World War that, half a century later, is being invaded by nature and graffitis. These pictures punctuate the sisters’ individual show at the laborious and challenging the main exhibition space of the Centro de Arte Moderna of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

The protection of testimonies and the conservation of evidences start from the historical memory. The twin sisters’ work entails a constant remembrance of what use to be, the psychologically state of living in times already gone, be it the Second World War or the colonial periods, for instance, and unconsciously aspires to return to a lost youth. The works on show are an archaeology analysis about how do these narratives reverberates today, how we lose living memory and create time suspended memories.

As part of the mnemonic archive (framed by films, videos and photographs) created by Jane and Louise Wilson, the series Oddments (2008) enclose thousands of second-hand books standing still on shelves or laying around in piles, some without covers others missing a few pages; all with a kind of flaw, a fault marking the object. Though, this brings back into one’s mind JG Ballard’s vision about the contradiction of modern life. Whereas Ballard, through the written word, evokes fractured landscapes full of wrecked machinery, as is explored in the novel about sexual arousing Crash (1973), or in the deserted beaches of The Terminal Beach (1964), in some of Jane and Louise’s pictures the disturbing motion given by the human presence transform an inert space in the sexiest recollection of books, embedded by a place packed with deep sensations, firm emotions, the exciting flaws and time made evidence imperfections.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXIX, Núm. 259/260 (156), February/March 2010 España © Jane and Louise Wilson, Casemate H667, 2006

Peter Piller: Regionales Leuchten

Marz Gallery (Lisbon)
Peter Piller: Regionales Leuchten

Peter Piller enlarges copies of printed images with no substantial focus or significant detail; he classifies and catalogues on a non-chronological order what was already fragmented. These are pictures that were taken from German regional newspapers, and from aerial images bought from a defunct company, whose business in the 1980s was to exploit German homeowner’s vanity. In the exhibition Regionales Leuchten, shown at Marz Gallery, there is no beginning or an end point.

What seems to be designated and arranged thematically into visual clusters accordingly to the photographer’s chance becomes an opportunity to reflect about social performance, historical meanings and the linear trends of thoughts. Clearly referring to Aby Warburg’s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, or Thomas Ruff’s Zeitungsfoto, the set of photographs shown are decontextualised from their initial mode of consumption and use and are also ordered according to their theme similarity: Bürozeichnungen rub shoulders with Suchende Polizisten, and several pictures entitled Regionales Leuchten are in-between those from Ungeklärte Fälle. The work becomes sovereign on its won while responding to Piller’s momentary life experiences and the viewer’s own constructed history.

Up until recently, the exhibition layouts were conceived as a linear succession of formal conceptions, individual and collective experiences, each bearing a new perspective onto everyday life. However, in this particular case, what is on show is a vicious order making us travels from a frame in history into another historical frame. Piller’s visual archive recalls histories about particular times, places, scenes or events that were captured without further subjectivity or hidden agenda. He gives to the exhibition its own visual dynamics; it is formed as a registry and gives a glimpse record of everyday life on with a disconnected type of “visual writing”. When they need to illustrate reports regarding local stories, human beings indistinctively frame life without control into newspapers’ pages.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXIX, Núm. 259/260 (154), February/March 2010 España Peter Piller's exhibition view

André Romão: The Winter of (our) Discontent

Kunsthalle Lissabon (Lisbon)
André Romão: The Winter of (our) Discontent

Every time a political ideology is deposed by the use of force or violence – either through a military coup, a democratic revolution or through any other method –, one of the first casualties is that of the limits defining the public space. In this, most often, public statues tend to be regarded as the focus point expressing and exulting ideas and creeds of the now deposed government. The statue is decapitated and the body falls with it. The overthrowing of these symbolic forms contains in itself the act of defeat, of downfall but also of fragmentation and breakage of what was considered to be the perfect representation of an ideal state.

Devoid of all the paraphernalia involving the legitimating process of particular ideological institutions, the act of “removed from power” emphasizes the fact that a transformation in public sphere has occurred. The ideological-political discourse doesn’t incorporate words; it makes the change evident physically. In The Winter of (Our) Discontent, by André Romão, an overthrown sculpture changes the spatial limits of Kunsthalle Lissabon. The normal order and law defined by the objects favour a formal equilibrium, however the sculpture laying down on the floor confines it, the space becomes smaller, constrained. As is the case in closed societies, the statue also contains with it the monumental idiosyncrasies particular to the surplus of authoritarian states.

In previous works Romão questioned the usage of public space – an area that because of its accessible nature becomes a space of conflicts. The critical point becomes apparent when the artist asks us to start to question the character of a system of government. This common place is controlled by means of its individualization. That is the other side of the exhibition, since the “Winter of Discontent” refers also to a period in British history of strikes and social protests, between 1978-79, when trade unions contested government economic actions that seemed sensible and judicious under for the time.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXIX, Núm. 259/260 (152), February/March 2010 España. André Romão's exhibition view

Sophie Calle: Talking to Strangers

Whitechapel Gallery (London)
Sophie Calle: Talking to Strangers

A set of colour photographs of women and a note explaining what has triggered Take Care of Yourself (2007), introduces the exhibitions Sophie Calle: Talking to Strangers to visitors at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, in London. After contemplating the multiple interpretations given to Sophie Calle’s e-mail, sent by X (an ex-boyfriend) telling her that their relationship has ended, we go through several rooms arranged over two floor of the gallery. We dive into a game that combines sound, text and image, which is an extensive and comprehensive account regarding the artist body of work developed, since the Eighties.

The subject in Calle’s works is questioning the boundaries between what is public and what is within the private sphere. By using her body as a medium the artist encourages a series of provocative intended actions: following people on the street – a reference to 1969, Vito Acconci’s Following Piece –, or inviting strangers to sleep in her bed while she observes and photographs those individuals who were invited to trespass from the public in to the private sphere. She documents physical interactions between the observer and the observed to allow the other to know and become involved by her private domains.

The second part of the exhibitions works as a retrospective. It shows encounters and actions in which the artist creates events, but which hardly happen: traces left by customers at The Hotel (1981); the voyage in the Trans-Siberian, from Moscow to Vladivostok, where the artist shares a compartment with the Russian Anatoli (1984); Gotham Handbook (1994), a collaboration with the writer Paul Auster; Where and When? Berck (2004), etc.

More than a visual sequence of events, it is the written word that follows each project. Documenting every action, every situation, every event perpetuated by Sophie Calle along her journey, like a forensic scientist.

Coming back, to Take Care of Yourself, photos and printing gravitate with multiple specialized worlds, projecting each of the intervenient narratives. Numerous monitors screen the same matter, the commentary on the break-up letter, interpreted by more than 10 women and a parrot. We find ourselves, has the other, in the strange situation of being entrusted with her private experiences.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXVIII, Núm. 258 (90), December 2009 España © Sophie Calle, "Take Care of Yourself" (detail showing the Opera de Paris Dancer, Marie-Agnès Gillot), 2007

The Rate of Converge of Two Opposing System Trajectories

Galeria Graça Brandão (Lisboa)
Edgar Martins : The Rate of Converge of Two Opposing System Trajectories

In order to reach the gallery Graça Brandão, in Lisbon, located in one of the many historic districts in the city, it is necessary to go through cafés and taverns. Places embedded between designer shops and private homes that during the night become bars and fado houses. We walk through and crossing homely streets to get to a former warehouse, once used by one of the many newspapers that existed in Portugal in the last century, now transformed into an exhibition space for contemporary art.

Completely integrated in this reality, the gallery has always been at the heart of sensory experiences. It is enveloped in the sounds coming from many rehearsal rooms at the nearby music conservatory. While inside the exhibition space, we chance upon remnants of a fruit market, the smell of apples – a reference we find too vulgar, as if the gas from the fruit would speed up the ripening of the images presented at the exhibition The Rate of Converge of Two Opposing System Trajectories, by Edgar Martins.

Some of the photographs presented are part of the series Ruins of the Gilded Age. Journalism issues aside, there has always been a too specific link between the images digitally manipulated by the author, even in previous series like Topologies, and the writing of Guy Debord, about the society of spectacle: “The specialization of images of the world is completed in the world of the autonomous image, where the liar has lied to himself”.

Two orders are confronted: the photographic series in which it includes the image of a room at 14 Baldwin Farms South, Greenwich, Conn. (the photo displayed at the gallery is different from the digitally altered imaged shown in the north-American newspaper, and from that was originally photographed by the author), and the series that gives title to the exhibitions, The Rate of Converge of Two Opposing System Trajectories, where debris left inside empty buildings are constructed and appear as pure forms, such as in False Imprisonment or Untouchable, both from 2008.

In the revelation of the false move, reality in the “blackmail accounts for the general acceptance of the illusion at the heart of the consumption of modern” economy, in which the spectacle is the common manifestation that can be found on the way to gallery.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXVIII, Núm. 258 (88), December 2009 España © Edgar Martins, "Untitled (Phoenix, Arizona)", from the series "Ruins of the Gilded Age", 2008

Jorge Molder: Pinocchio

Chiado 8 Arte Contemporânea (Lisbon)
Pinocchio

Situated in an heterogeneous locality, in Lisbon city centre, Chiado 8 Arte Contemporânea would have the means to established a dialogue with its surrounding instead of just traditionally exhibit objects. Thought, it is less a critical survey of a highly influential aesthetic than a feel-good baggy reunion, focused on one’s identity. This last thing is what we find when we see Jorge Molder’s new body of work entitled Pinocchio.

Artworks are a reflection of their time. Monarch, aristocrats and wealthy individuals before the 20th century have usually been happy to have themselves and those from their file immortalized in oil painting and sculptures. Rarely commissioning artworks set out to represent society as a whole. Even in our times, portraits, in particular, unveil and reveal the tastes of the commissioning classes. On a different level, already in Ancient Egypt kings used the mummification’s process to preserve the body for afterlife, as a means to aid the essence as it transitions to a new destination.

Nonetheless, today almost everything comes out of photography, the medium has had popularized itself as form and as capturing moments in time and theories: copying, cutting and pasting out almost anything that is in existence, the reproducibility of what is possible – Cindy Sherman’s dressed like a model is turning in to the dressed model as they really are; John Coplans’ nude body is about how we bare an aged body.

Thus, this new work by the Portuguese photographer keeps with the same philosophical and systematic exploration brought by him in the last three decades. Photographic pictures of the self assembled as portraits with dark cloaks evolving him. In Pinocchio, while encapsulating the body in strips of white linen, by change, the search transfers the negative into positive. In the burial ceremony the black mourning becomes a white journey.

Getting into the public realm, both context and content are deceitful pictures, double-dealing like Pinocchio’s dream of becoming a real boy. Meaning, the reconstruction of a place multiple singularities whereas focus to the outside (being inclusive), rather than to the self (being exclusive).

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXVIII, Núm. 255. (92), Verano 2009 España © Jorge Molder, de la serie "Pinocchio", 2006-2009, fotografia, 96x96cm.

John Baldessari: Raised Eyebrows/Furrowed Foreheads: Part II

Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art (Lisbon)
John Baldessari: Raised Eyebrows/Furrowed Foreheads: Part II

Merging photography, painting and cut-out shapes above the picture plane Baldessari’s artistic subversion has built a relationship between word and image. In the current exhibition, windows open an imagined territory that is physically delimited by the two rooms. These plane pieces narrate experiences and events on colourless walls; colourful lines on the figure’s foreheads, eyes and eyebrows are unwrapped as three-dimensional furrows into the artist’s exploration of human identity. Still, with a quite ambiguous humour, Baldessari, in this series about raised eyebrows and furrowed foreheads, based on appropriated images, maps the result or effect of the object’s action or condition on the logical interpretative disjunction.

For instance, works such as Angel (with Cross) and Person, Two cannons, Man (Falling) and Horse or Money (with People Gambling), all from 2009, reveal glimpses of hidden contexts perceived individually by our own: in Man (Falling) and Horse two photos of eyes with painted eyebrows converse with a painted photo of a man falling from a running horse; or in Angel (with Cross) and Person, an yellow cut-out cross is shown by the Angle to a man holding up his harms while the lower half of the work a troubled blue forehead is reminiscent of the Vetruvian Man, disperse in a yellow background. A discourse extending between photography and painting, linking space and colour. On a three-dimensional level these works disclose an imaginary order embroiling the fragmentation of human bodies and consequences.

This body of work created after series such as Noses & Ears, Etc. (2006-07) and Arms and Legs (Specif. Elbows & Knees), Etc. (2007) addresses the idea of the whole and concerns the total, a characteristic of John Baldessari’s works. In more recent years, he has fragmented single motifs such as the human body on to the canvas areas to defy linear narratives or plain and conformist interpretations. While de-mystifying the artistic process and criticising image consumption these artworks epitomize the whole body that is transformed through assumption into abstractions about linguistics and aesthetic philosophies.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXVIII, Núm. 254. (88), Junio 2009 España © John Baldessari, "Money (with People Gambling)", 2009

Jochen Lempert: Field Work

Culturgest (Lisboa)
Jochen Lempert: Field Work

At the beginning, as we walked through the different exhibition rooms on the ground floor of the main building of the Caixa Geral de Depósitos (Lisbon), the perception of Jochen Lempert work’s manifested a disengaged anthropological concern about the study of the birds and other elements from different geographical areas. However, instead of dawdling around, a closer look at the artworks reveals something more than this generic reference to the collection or creation of new information about the researched field. Either though the object photographed, the subject of the image or in how it is displayed.

The subject matter of his work is nature, and in particular what looks like a general visual collection of birds in all their possibilities and demonstrations: the series Flock (2005) looked like random lines drawn on a white paper, but in fact it is images documenting a number of birds travelling together; on what can be perceived as a casual action the series Formation (Swans) (2000) are formal arrangements of four swans; while Strange Birds – The invasion of Central Europe by the Waxwing in the Year 2004 (2005) captures and documents an idealized explanation about movement.

On another level, testing the material capabilities with low contrasts, different formats, rough edges and textures, all this raw data is originally collected and displayed by Lempert in an attempt to reduce the observer bias on the phenomenon being observed, and on the interpretation of the reflected realities and significations.

Jochen Lempert medium is clearly photography, but in some of his work he crosses the boundaries between photography and drawing. With a cinematographic look he makes the same inquire about the nature of life that we see in Un voyage en Mer du Nord (2007), for instance. We, as observers, find ourselves with the same sensation as when on a boat on high seas without any referent or referential point.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXVIII, Núm. 253 (87), Mayo 2009 España © Jochen Lempert, "Anschütz", 2006

Gerald Petit: Beautiful Strange

Caroline Pagès (Lisboa)
Gerald Petit: Beautiful Strange

The rumour – an action – circulates as a story or information of uncertain or doubtful truth about something. It is noise. It lives exclusively in the memory of those who shared the same space simultaneously; those present when the action took place. The premise: to instigate a rumour verbally – spread by multiple agents, it is fed until any physical reminiscence is understood as being a consequence of the rumour. The plot: the exhibition Beautiful Strange by Gerald Petit at Caroline Pagès’s transformed apartment in a traditional living neighbourhood at the centre of Lisbon, since we live in a permanent state of exception.

The painting Electric Ladyland (2009) is the starting point to construct the exhibition’s narrative, and the benchmark work that allow us to unveil the possible relations between duplicity in individuals and the vampire character. Between popular culture and popular myths. As in, for instance, the relation of Inner Vision #1 and #2 (2009) and Have you ever danced with the devil at the pale moonlight? (2009). The first subject is painted and the former is photographed. The first object refrers to the iconic pop singer Stevie Wonder, while the second to vampires. They focus on the double and on reflection.

Though, Jimi Hendrix’s album Electric Ladyland has become a staple artwork for an era, given its technical-plastic perfection in rock music that is accompanied by a striking cover photo of a group of nude woman showing all their imperfections, expressing the sexual liberation of the sixties. In the last room, a small painted portrait of Prince intertwine with Purple castle made of sand (2009), landmark photo showing an entrance to a Hollywood residence, and a reference to one of Hendrix’s songs.

Not that Petit’s works define what is the identity of a particular political system or regime, but cleverly they do verge towards the subject of aesthetics and at the role of art. It is a matter of interpreting what it was, what it is, what it can be, and what it is not, but though, as in the rumour, Gerald Petit’s works are open to a disorderly infinity of interpretations about the double and reflection while the source is lost along the way.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXVIII, Núm 253 (88), Mayo 2009 España © Gerald Petit, "Electric Ladyland (after the 1968 LP Cover)", 2009

Luisa Lambri

Fundación RAC (Pontevedra, Spain)
Luisa Lambri

For someone who photographs architecture, Luisa Lambri’s pictures show a distinct universe of the photographed object. The chiaroscuro transcends a personal identity. Her images tend to a poetic expression revealing an apparent sensual reality, where we can find Lambri’s persona in the photographed spaces rather than their architects’.

At the historical centre of Pontevedra, and in a restored house that has been transformed into an exhibition according to contemporary art conveniences and necessities, eleven medium size black & white photographs compose different groups referring to architectural buildings, such as Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (Santiago de Compostela), or Casa Serralves (Porto).

Within each construction context, each picture resembles to the former, but with a tiny difference, that is barely visible, and differentiates it from the previous photograph. The images shown at Fundación RAC capture a world – a wall, windows and a corner in the ceiling –, where Luisa Lambri changes the camera position, the angle, or the captured light, almost as imperceptible, in distinctive moments in time. In some, the intensity of luminosity is so affecting that the object blurs into the paper’s whiteness, disentangling it from constrains derived from its own objectification.

However, Lambri’s concerns are about time. She does not document the architect or even has a vision about the architect’s spatial perspective. It is something else, a sort of “dislocation”. She is interested in how shadows and light disturb usually organized places, creating an, almost, cinematographic register. Her photographs are works about perception.

Luisa Lambri photos refer back to geometric abstraction, and to the confluence between that geometrical abstraction and nature. A discourse on the use of light and shadows to achieve a sense of volume when modelling three-dimensional objects. The objects perceived play between geometry and the curves of the human body, between the relations in proportions and surfaces with nature.

They question the landscape, the female body, the figure, the curve – that is nature –, and the relative arrangements of the parts of something – geometry.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXVIII, Núm. 253 (93), April 2009 España © Luisa Lambri, "Untitled (Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, #08)", 2008

Christopher Wool

Museu de Serralves (Porto)
Christopher Wool

The heavy silence and emasculation that characterise the Serralves rooms has became diluted by Christopher Wool’s painting and silkscreen work. Reduced abstractions that unleash layers of sound, unheard music overcoming those sumptuous white spaces. There are street encounters along the route with particular note, beats, control, and rhythms. These paintings are translated into a withdrawal from reality and from personal interaction into desire and delusion, with a sense of fragmentation.

Through untitled silkscreen to untitled painting, an urban schizophrenia is translated into a pictorial context. The institutionalized interior space that delimits the museum from the urban area surrounding it is brought down by the inconsistent and contradictory elements demarking the 35 large-scale surfaces. As on an urban set, through streets and parks, from private places to public spaces and therein, we walk in erratic wet brush strokes and prearranged accidents, sinking in to the residual paint’s appearance and disappearance.

Painted symbols, most of them were made between 2006 and 2008 and a few conceived previously; some are manmade marks while others are more mechanical – enamel on linen or silkscreen ink on paper. Wool’s painting style depicts urban decay: he erases, replace and covers up in layers small areas on a surface with different lines, spots, stains and colours. Transforming what is generally accepted as the reality of a disciplined space into an idiosyncratic belief maintained by the work’s disorder.

A flow of strong, regular, disorderly repeated patterns of movement and arrangements, playing like notes on a white page or blank canvas. These large-scale vertical impositions become sensorial portals into different territories. Meanwhile, those discomforting deviations reverberate in individual uttered sounds experienced as recognizable, internally expressed opinions.

Moving on to a different set from the one he made with the painted phrases, his work still has a hardcore combination of defiance, intelligence and visual talent. Nevertheless, this anti-establishment is pitch-perfect for today’s market. Through these pictures Wool express something, then weaken it; he makes an argument then rejects it, while comprising the whole and then exploding the components.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXVIII, Núm. 250_1 (183), Febrero_Marzo 2009 España © Christopher Wool, "Untitled", 2007, pintura sobre tela, 269,24x243,84cm.

Carlos Noronha Feio

Sopro – Projecto de Arte Contemporânea (Lisboa)
A A and Away

The relations between art, artworks, artists and the institutional power have been defining biopolitical reorganization and the imposition of new aesthetic regimes. Carlos Noronha Feio has chosen this sphere as the subject matter to the exhibition at Sopro Projecto de Arte Contemporânea. Contemporary artists work globally on subjects that are relevant to a globalising society, while they conceive creative forms that are related to way of doing and making specific to each territory.

The exhibition is a combination of video and video performances, painting, handcrafted rugs. The artist plays with the human situation and the circumstances of life in all their bareness. Carlos Noronha Feio registered this in video and video performances, such as A of Afghanistan (2008), and Simple Movements for a meaning – Campos Neolíticos nos arredores de Arraiolos (2008): we see the artist running around looking and marking out places, like an animal defining his territory with urine; or as in Simple Movements for a meaning – Castelo de Arraiolos I (2008): like pirates hiding lost treasures he digs and marks the place with a cross.

In one of the rooms, five hand-made Arraiolos’ rugs refer to the transcultural condition. The Afghan condition is imbedded in the Portuguese surface: Rockets up and down down and up (Good news) or Satellite (Good news – birth and fertility – fate, wheels of fortune), both from 2008, become the assimilation of the otherness by a national product.

These artworks are an analysis on the irresolvable internal contradiction or the logical external disjunction that derive from culture. The exhibition is marked by internal boundaries and power relationship, where the artworks have subjective assumptions in the communication of realities, while being abstractions of what identity is.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXVIII, Núm. 250_1 (186), Febrero_Marzo 2009 España © Carlos Noronha Feio, "Satellite (Good news - Birth and Fertility - Fate, Wheels of Fortune)", 2008, tapiz de lane siguiendo la técnica artesanal de Arraiolos, 216x122cm.

Mara Castilho

Galeria 111 (Lisboa)
Mara Castilho: Trapped inside my head

Really, the question posed by the nature of the work Trapped inside my head by Mara Castilho, showing at 111 gallery, does not differ from that of the purpose of the sacrifice – an offering to death. Being trapped inside oneself it is an unpleasant situation it is hard to escape, while in the act of becoming trapped, one gives up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more worthy, in order to persuade someone to do something that they would not otherwise want to do, by means of deception.

The first thing we notice is a video installation, Untitled (2008), which projects a human figure on to the floor. Tranquillity lends strength and a sense of peacefulness surround a prostate, nude woman with anxious breathing, suggesting nature’s fertility. However, this projected body lying on a green carpet of turf traces back to fields where thousands of death bodies lie, testimonies from the Balkans war.

However, on the other side of the exhibition space, the video projection Sarajevo: Walking Through Rubble (2008), show us a half-naked body on a transparent morphogenesis surface. This work makes reference to the thousand of bodies thrown in to Sarajevo river, while streaming images of decay and destruction pass in slow motion.
But in the work that entitle the exhibition Trapped inside my head (2008) – two plasma screens – the sacrifice remains open to the representation of what repels us.

The exhibition is accompanied by two more works, however the whole assemblage – the object, the subject and the observer – does not differ substantially from what the Aztecs had came to see at the base of a pyramid, where the victim’s heart was to be torn out. It is the testimony that we follow a lineage of sacrifices, sacred murders made by the thousands. Art may have finally liberated itself from the service of political dictates but it maintains it servitude with regard to horror. Castilho’s art puts us on the path of complete destruction and suspends us in time – it offers pure pleasure without real death.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXVIII, Núm. 250_1 (184), Febrero_Marzo 2009 España © Mara Castilho (left): "Waiting I", 2008, impresion en caja de luz, 44x70cm; (right) "Untitled", 2008, impresión sobre tela, 80,5x119,5cm.