Toys in a house in Coimbra

1.
Housing is synonymous with inhabiting — living and being in a space where it houses us. ART IS ALSO A HOME FOR THE ARTIST, the precise space that the artist inhabits and where it is.

The housing space has evolved over time and, in parallel, with the art history. From the outset, becoming more complex, through the compartmentalization and specialization of the interior.

Its multiplication and association also gave way to urban agglomerations, a place where civilization developed to a large extent. Cities were defined as opposed to the natural exterior, in a cluster of built and free spaces, including outdoor spaces but directly associated with the house and often experienced by its inhabitants.

Bachelar tells us about the «poetic of the house», in the way in which our memories of the houses we inhabit mark us.

Vidler, for his part, reminds us how Freud's expression «uncanny» refers to a mixed sense of familiarity and fear. For example, when we find ourselves in front of our uninhabited childhood home. As if in that small-scale space, we could no longer house our privacy. An inversion of «sublime» that attracted many thinkers, which can be illustrated as the feeling felt when alone in the face of the immensity of certain landscapes.

The house is a symbol of privacy and private life. «Domus» as opposed to «urbe», or rather «civitas» — the public place.
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2.
For children, home is a world where they recognize themselves and their parents. An immense space that appropriates and where it develops its activities and faculties.

Without dwelling on the child's developmental stages — from newborn to puberty — everything goes along with this.

Among the various activities are the primary ones of eating, sleeping, and playing. «Playing» predates conceptualization and language, a symbol of the mature rational human. PLAYING IS NOT RESTRICTED TO CHILDREN, and can be hampered in the way we play sociability - par excellence in public space. But also in the private space, which is filled with protocols, individual or emanating from outside the social sphere. And the family is that smallest social unit.

When playing, the child deals with and learns to relate to the world. It all starts in the restricted space of the crib, with eye movement, up to movements that occur with motor development and, progressively, with the manipulation of objects that subvert space.

The small world sometimes extends to adjoining outdoor spaces. The so-called rear — the «backyard» of the house becomes for those who enjoy it a magical place where anything can happen.
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3.
We don't think it's inappropriate to establish a relationship between the space that houses the present exhibition and the history of art spaces.

As is well known, art was one of the primitive ways of ordering the «chaos» of the world. Gradually, it became something specific and distant from the mortal's daily life. Surrendered to the supposed «genius» of the romantic artist, art followed a path of exclusivity.

The museum and galleries have become the art exhibition spaces par excellence. Distant and above all frozen in their own temporality.

Bidimensionally hanging art on walls and three-dimensionally placing it on pedestals. It would take the 20th century to BRING ART TO LIFE AND MAKE ART OUT OF LIFE.

In the middle of the century, conventional art spaces were questioned. The «pop» appropriated the banal everyday, the installation and performance appealed to us to live it, and the «ready-made» and the «conceptual» sophisticated the relationships established with art. The «ateliers», and then the street, become suitable places for the hostel of art and its developments. The private space, and the house in particular, have also become art spaces, spaces that the artist opens up or appropriates for any artistic manifestation. Equally dignified and, eventually, more genuine demonstrations.

The space of this exhibition is understood in this history of exhibition spaces.
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4.
On the other hand, sculptural objects also expanded their «field». Not in the sense of Krauss, on a path that passes through «Land-art», but in the sense of his own materiality. Built with a pre-existing, recontextualized materiality, they acquired a new meaning.

In the present case — sculptural objects made from toys — the said reuse acquires an even greater depth and meaning.

A toy is a unique object that accompanies a child IN INFINITY, WHICH IS A TIME FOR PLAYING. It embodies the dense imaginary that the children dreamed of. In this sense, these sculptural objects may even seem traumatic to us — if understood as a loss of this.

But on the other hand, having become art, they enthrone the dream of these children in any spectator. They dignify «playing» and the child in the shareable dimension that is «art».
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5.
The «Toys Re Re-play» sculptures, now shown in a more conventional space, gain with this re-situation in a dwelling, a context even more suitable for their enjoyment and aesthetic experience. Visitors, more than spectators, can expand their imagination to their past childhood or to the limit of their dreams.

We also referred earlier to the relationship between play and language. In the present case, the association of creative writing with sculpture is all too timely. A writing that DOES NOT INTEND TO EXPLAIN ART, BUT RATHER EXPANDS ITS MEANING, circumscribing the dream space. It's definitely a happy association.

The proposed aesthetic experience is also extended by other languages, and its intended recording in a book cannot but aim to be more than that — a mere «file».
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6.
In recent times, I have been following the work carried out by António Azenha.

Our Backyard is a coherent and consistent result of that journey. Your exhibition within the framework of the representation of CAPC (Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra) but, in particular, in this house harbors the institution in the city of Coimbra, is a happy choice. It encourages us to experience art in its magnanimous expression, to dream and imagine. And that is one of the most intrinsic functions of an art that makes sense at a time marked by contemporary indecisions and an alleged global crisis.

We are faced with an artistic manifestation in domestic intimacy, but which does not fail to call for a reflection on the «sublime» public on the POSSIBILITY OF POLITICAL ACTION OF ART, WITHIN ITS STRICT LIMITS. And even on Sundays.

Gonçalo Furtado
Coimbra, May 2013