IT'S STRANGE
Unexpected encounters are strange,
Strange will be EVERYTHING you don't know,
NOTHING is important, but EVERYTHING is very important,
Each DECISION by itself does not weigh, a million DECISIONS weigh a lot.
Each work is a world in precedence.
Apparently everything is known: diversity of subjects, diversity of points of view, diversity of stories... but then NOTHING will be the same anymore because you start a solitary journey through the absorbed sensations that are inevitably disturbing and active.
And if it doesn't happen... it didn't happen.
And it is this disquieting ignorance that will reconstruct the objects that delimit humanity and map the world of each of us.
Although I personally know all the names here and in some cases participate in the complicity of their creative process and know that each one has its structuring truth, the disturbing thing is not knowing what will happen next.
The set of works gathered in this exhibition, entitled "é estranho", results from the continuation of the partnership work between the Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão and the Faculdade de Belas Artes.
The factors that led us to select the projects on display, diverse in their individual modes and processes, are the result of understanding the artistic "thing" from a cultural and not just a formal point of view, of a clear perception of the importance of doubt in formulating questions and obtaining answers, of the clear realization that forms, rather than being seen as a result of cause, are above all consequential, and of thinking about the constant, and sometimes absurd, need to invent new ways of transforming matter.
The need precedes the explanation.
Joining them, perhaps, is only my gaze:
In Anabela Mota I was struck by the poetics of places and light,
In Andreia César, the expressive persistence of black painted papers, crossing horizontals with verticals, with successive overlaps and concealments that unveil impossible landscapes,
In Carolina Quirino, a line that defines contrasting shapes, one after the other, in a dreamlike game of infinite possibilities,
In Eduardo Fonseca I was impressed by the photo-pictorial simplicity, the logic of the moments stopped in time and the construction of the painting according to the principles of drawing,
In Ivo Rodrigues, the matter transformed by fire and the reconstitution and multiplication of the fragments of an unknown face.
In Joanne Hovencamp, stone transfigured into man, into body, architecturally, as a perennial support for thought,
In João Maciel, action and intervention through reflection between exterior and interior, collecting, transforming and (re)presenting truths,
In Roberto Caló, a volumetry given by light that illuminates uncomfortable expressions and anatomies,
In Sara Morais, records of suggestive healthy, strong and beautiful bodies, but fragmented in time and space.
The world is not flat, contrary to what you might think.
It is obvious how easy it is to communicate through the large networks of systems that now dominate and level the world. Distances are easier and shorter. Cultural differences are blurring, dangerously!
Because neither the world, nor much less art, is two-dimensional. This two-dimensionality, long proclaimed as a global paradise, has led art towards universally centralized models that tend to provoke dehumanized thinking, because it is focused on a kind of fast art as the ideal solution.
But it is the multidiversity of processes and the legitimacy of each of them that guarantee the freedom to build and to exist, and therefore the human factor in our time.
Thus, this body of work is only a small part of the multidiverse collective treasure, built by some strange necessity that precedes any explanation.
Ilídio Salteiro, April 2012