Immateriality and Authorship

For Nuno Sousa Vieira there can be no ART without exposure (exhibitions) in these terms: of the impossibility of the EXHIBITION, precisely. Now, when we say that art is the exhibition (or, to put it simply, the exhibition is an “exhibition of works of art”), we must bear in mind that this thing called “exhibition” is above all a question: therefore, how to exhibit a work of art if it is intrinsically immaterial, neither visible nor invisible, but something that we have to build mentally and formally?

However, to the materiality of the work we must add the exercise of memory. As in the legend of Parsifal the first time the Graal was shown to him (he was indifferent to the “spectacle” /ritual), it is no use for us to be spectators of the work (or its fragment) that is in front of us: nothing may be there, there may be something that refers to a truly existing work but that we do not see because we only have access to a descriptive text, it may finally be there, here before us, a referral to another place or another exhibition.

If we haven't seen it, a little while ago in the Pavilhão Branco of the Museum of the City (Lisbon), We are the ones who change when we actually become aware of the other, or, before (2010, Gal. Graça Brandão), Tuesday to Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., a title that is a Mise-en-Abîme, because it is the time of the venue of the exhibition that titles the proposal, that is, the “open” gallery is inside the closed gallery (separated from the street) and open (accessible, however)... It should be noted that this “closed” and “open” is something very significant, since many of the author's works consist of the removal, transportation, replacement, and transfiguration of doors and windows. If we haven't seen something that has already happened (other exhibitions by the author), as I said, everything or nothing may be lost. In other words, if we see we relate the present with what we know about the past, if we don't see we become aware that the work does not match the one presented, and so it is our duty, in the exhibition, to think about what “art” is, because this definition that we constructed is part of what it is to be a “spectator”.

So, we are in the space, the walls and windows of the exhibition space are also here, but the work may not be there (City Museum): this means that the work, the art, is the OTHER that the author tells us abundantly about.

Derrida tells us that the essential question about being (what is existing?, what is Nothing?) it is too conditioned by the presence of something in the present, that is, by what we see at the moment, and this “presence of the present” is not necessarily essential. This other reality is called ANOTHER: we must be able to see or perceive the existence of the OTHER, because only in this way do we change. The author is right, yes, We change when we become aware of the other. And we change from a passive creature in the exhibition to the condition of a spectator, who scrutinizes, approaches, revolts, or delights...

Art is the OTHER, because in Plato it is incapable of producing or transmitting “truth” and in romanticism it is indeed the only way to access truth. Now, what “is not” (truth) and at the same time “is” (truth), must be resolved dialectically as something of the “spirit”, although this is (paradoxically) that which embodies space and time: all of the author's work has as its theme artistic creation through the memory of what was his ateliê (an old plastic factory) and the ghostly objects that populate it.

Nuno Sousa Vieira's last individual project took place in two spaces concurrently (G. Graça Brandão and Anastácio Gonçalves Museum): the works on one side referred to the other (concurrently, I repeat). Now these works refer to works and proposals from other times (since 2010). We immaterialize, we go to the past and from now on. So we changed. In a way, we went from spectators to authors.

Carlos Vidal
May 2013

Gridded Wall

We witnessed “authorial interference” in a space that was long ago emancipated from its authors, gaining the daily practice of a place (Círculo Sereia). An interference that pressures me to review what it means to erect a wall; to look at it is to experience in a state that is not yet immersive and hypnotic, the effect of an occupation, which fills and cancels the breadth of gestures; this experience is therefore situated on the threshold between technique (knowing how to erect walls, real or imagined) and art (the wall as an idea and as an experience of all walls and of something else); this experience places in a state of deprivation the raum (the space) that is within an everyday life. The idea of continuity is suspended.

The constructive character knows only one motto: to create space, only one activity: to fill. Here I invert Walter Benjamin's terms and complete them with Goethe who tells us that “in order for something to appear it has to disintegrate completely”. I begin with this dialectic between fullness and separation because this may be Nuno Sousa Vieira's tropism when confronting us with a parietal structure that results from the fictitious displacement of the back of the CAPC to its entrance. (...)

Pedro Pousada

An Atelier, a Factory and a Showroom — Not always in that order.

Workshops no longer exist, at least in my case. Or rather, there are workspaces and I am the studio. My studio moves, not because it's a mobile building, but because I'm a person, with an existence in motion. My studio is me. It was Daniel who told me, he didn't tell me that well, or at least, I didn't understand that he told me so clearly but, deep down, I believe that's what he wanted to tell me.

The studios no longer exist, they are part of an imaginary where the artists were creators, with buildings isolated from the world, isolated, that is to say neither on the sidelines nor outside the world. On the contrary, the ateliers were almost sacred places that received and interpreted the issues of the world. Jackson had a house, slept, ate, and worked inside, in one of the rooms, or in any room as needed. However, there was one day when he decided to break up a wall and paint a picture, and so he did.

The studios no longer exist, the artists no longer have the money to have a space entirely dedicated to their artistic production, they have not stopped working, they have ceased to have spaces with the necessary attributes to carry out their work, Simala Plastics have had no water or electricity since 2007, it was Nuno who told me.

The studios no longer exist, the artists no longer manufacture, they have them done, it was Cennini who told me, one day, he shouted out loud, bring a table, I listened to him, pulled out a chair, grabbed a book, read three pages, opened the computer, planned a play, called Mr. Jorge and, last week, I went to get my latest sculpture.

The factories are closed. In 2012, in Portugal alone, more than 5 thousand companies went bankrupt. How many of these spaces have been left to abandon.

The factories are closed. The natural space was gradually replaced by built space, which in turn was closed and dehumanized.

The factories are closed. Nature is slowly regaining what was its own and the materials, left to their fate, return to the condition of transformable matter.

The exhibition rooms are empty, waiting for the works to arrive, leaving the studios empty.

The exhibition halls are empty, in the hope that someone will inhabit them. In fact, the same is true with factories.

The showrooms are empty, the factories are closed and the studios no longer exist, not always in that order.

nvs
October, 2012