Antes Desse Ouro
Graffiti (mixed media on paper, variable dimensions), one of them collectively made (Istrati, 1984).
Presented at:
Cooperativa Diferença, Lisbon, February-March 1986.
Círculo de Artes Plásticas, Coimbra, June 1986.
Esse Ouro Dantes
Alquimigramas photographic series (14 chemigrams, color, 70 × 100 cm).
Presented at:
Galeria Quadrum, Lisbon, March-April 1986.
Círculo das Artes Plásticas, Coimbra, June 1986.
"III Exposição de Artes Plásticas", Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, July-August 1986.
"Itinerários", Galeria Almada Negreiros, Lisbon, May-June 1987.
"Fotoporto", Casa de Serralves, Oporto, September 1988.
This exhibition (Antes Desse Ouro) is complementary and preliminary of the exhibition that opens next March at Galeria Quadrum (Esse Ouro Dantes).
... We shall say, as Fernão Lopes, that in both cases we are dealing with different modes of revelation, more so in the first case "the bodily from the outside" and, in some cases, the "spiritual of the soul"...
In the next exhibition – Esse Ouro Dantes – we'll find ourselves mostly with some of the five modes of revelation in dreams and ghosts. In this case it, will be dealing with an imploded matter.
Here [Antes Desse Ouro], on the contrary, everything has been arranged so that the composition is more or less premeditated, thus a bodily revelation.
Today we are no longer interested in beauty in the way it was defined by the past century's aesthetics, finished and perfect.
Today we are only interested in something whose instinctive, collective and especially socially motivated nature is such that its results, in a small or large format, may be past and pluperfect tenses: from writing to graffiti, from graffiti to the gestural again.
In this circumstance, this is painting that as a matter of fact makes pictures: for those who prefer to use them decoratively.
What interests the author the most is the process and the graphic outcome as a record of a certain activity. This is different in the implosions we'll see at the exhibition Esse Ouro Dantes. Because there one will try to find the result, after it's been photographed, of a process of destruction. To destroy, to attack, to implode... From black to gold, to the pencil (the revealed Work).
Materialism. The painting is a material thing, the matter is a mental thing.
Ernesto de Sousa, catalogue of "Antes Desse Ouro," 1986.
