NUNO SOUSA VIEIRA at Galeria Graça Brandão / Lisbon

NUNO SOUSA VIEIRA /  From Darkness to Light

16.01.2016 - 27.02.2016

Galeria Graça Brandão
Rua dos Caetanos 26A
(Bairro Alto)
1200-079 Lisboa
Portugal


http://www.galeriagracabrandao.com/
















 From return to return

All days I return and return expecting to return the next day. This return does not imply only a repetition. It finds in every way the difference, being both an evolving and cumulative process.

My studio is exactly this. A place of return, a place that allows me to re-evaluate, re-interpret and re-enable each of the parties that constitute and define a permanent relationship and connection with the world. Considering each of these space-time units that are repeated and reduplicated, constituting cycles. I feel close to Sisyphus who, after having cheated death, was condemned to an eternal repetition. It seems to me that everyday we cheat death, and therefore every day we return to the foot of the mountain with the expectation that tomorrow we can take the rock to the summit. Or we do not return exactly to the foot of the mountain but we become aware that around every curve always comes a higher place.

The return can in this sense be understood as the encounter between a beginning and an end.

On the other hand, the fact of returning and reviewing each segment is not accompanied by any distress or nostalgia, not just because it allows me to feel nostalgia but above all because it allows zme a permanent rediscovery. My return is always accompanied by other returns, which emphasizes the idea of returning as a place of encounters.

Return is reunited. To rediscover is to rebuild and consolidate. Rebuilding and consolidating is to be alive and back to move forward.

Close your eyes to see better and to anticipate and interpret what is beyond the curve of the road.
......
The course of the exhibition is also presented systematically, guided by returns both apparent and not. The image at the entrance door appears again in the video Return that is the last work of the exhibition, it asks  the spectator to revisit the exhibition but in the opposite direction the spectator himself becoming that that then mimics the reflection of the mirror. I very often use this type of surface as raw material in my work. This apparent return and repetition are present during the exhibition. 

Sujeito Indeterminado a sound and writing work is a collaborative piece that is positioned in three different spaces of the exhibition. The spectator occupies the two gallery floors, in which through these pieces, the curator Felipe Scovino and musician Adolfo Luxúria Canibal provide an explicit return to an earlier time. In these returns, one is presented again with the
beginning of the exhibition itself - the same place from which also originated the work Regressamos ao Presente e Deste emDiante (We return to the present and from this on).

The show, apparently with repeated pieces but all designed in different colors or with the same configuration but with different materials, scales or in different positions, as the four models of the SIMALA office building. Two of these models have been made in wood and another with the same dimensions has been developed in iron and is presented in an inverted position in relation to the other two. Its interior is full of olive oil and has a lighted wick in the place that corresponds to the main entrance of the SIMALA office building. The fourth model with the same configuration but on a different scale is the work  Sob a égide
do lugar (Under the aegis of the place). This work is constituted by two surfaces, one vertical which is the back elevation of the SIMALA office building and the other one is horizontal, which corresponds to the left side elevation of the same building. Moreover, each of these surfaces forms the support for other art pieces. In the vertical side is the work Regressamos ao presente e deste em diante (We return to this and this on) a photographic work mounted in a lightbox which shows an office with a levitating typewriter in front of which is a man typing while sitting in a chair. On the horizontal surface there are various objects and works composing a fragmented and disjointed narrative, repositioning the exhibition focus within the studio itself. Leaving the studio and returning to the exhibition up the stairs, on the right we find a room that is dominated by a large-scale sculpture, Janela para sentir saudade.  This work in made of raw mahogany with brass hinges, it fragments and divides the exhibition space. On the walls of this same room are three graphite drawings: Clarão 1/3, Clarão 2/3, Clarão 3/3, (Flare 1/3, Flare 2/3 and Flare 3/3). In these drawings the representation of light in various intensities builds a visibility route to invisibility. At the exit of the show is a picture of a glass slide for a magic lantern in a lightbox dating from the late XIX century, this piece alludes to a transient and alternating motion, From darkeness to light. I left. It is January and it’s a beautiful sunny day, this is the time to return!

Nuno Sousa Vieira,
January 2016