José Luís Neto has been carrying out «appropriation work» for a long time: 22474 (2000) and 22475 (2003), based on Joshua Benoliel, Anonymous (2005), based on a collection consisting of panoramic views of the city of Lisbon and unknown from the beginning of the 20th century, High Speed Press Plate (2006), from glass sheets prepared with photosensitive emulsions, July 84 (2010), based on amateur photographs subject to the evils of time, or PMC/P.M.I. (2008), pass-type photographs found on a tour. Sometimes details are selected and these are greatly enlarged. And what is it that we are given to see? Something that obviously comes from the past, and yet seems to be right in the present; sometimes, a palpitation between photography and painting; something that displaces us or that, to borrow the words of Sei Shōnagon, «makes the heart beat».

In Interpretation of Dreams, Freud recognizes the uniqueness of dream images in the fact that they constitute fragments of daytime images, therefore prior to “dream work”, but in which there is an unusual shift in psychic intensities: images related to traumatic events that do not affect us, and anodic images that can nevertheless elicit very intense emotional reactions. The dream goes back and, in doing so, remixes the intensities.

We know very well what José Luís Neto appropriates, we also know that they are the result of chance, of the vortex of time, the result of a selection, of reframing, of very precise options regarding presentation formats, we feel the incandescence of his images...

For Deleuze, in Godard, two images summon a third. Didi-Huberman goes further, considering that a single image immediately summons another. In one case as in the other, the images are multiple. With José Luís Neto, it can be seen that this is the case: photomatons haunted by portraits of Dumas, scenes from family and professional life reminiscent of pop colorism, abstract expressionism, Richter, Twombly, shadows from the kingdom of the dead... the list is extensive and contradictory, everything mixes with everything, the images short-circuit and (thus) touch us, open our imagination.

João Francisco Figueira