Cut Down The Middle is an exhibition with recent works by artist João Vasco Paiva and also by Heman Chong, Ramiro Guerreiro, Ko Sin Tung and Magdalena Wong.

In this exhibition at Galeria Avenida da Índia, all the artists have relationships with the artist Vasco Paiva, developed over the last ten years. Several contacts have been made between the artists – through projects, complicities, exhibitions, shared spaces in the past or loose conversations.

The curator Cláudia Pestana, who proposes a dialogue with the artist Vasco Paiva, manages to identify an invisible link in this exhibition; a thread that unites those involved in a common effort and profound reflection.

In the exhibition, we walk through rooms full of pieces that recall elements of the city, of the urban space, travelled by thousands of people. The signage of Hong Kong’s public thoroughfares and roads are the fuel of this exhibition and provoke great philosophical questions.

The way these places of passage are perceived, these induced paths, these routes that, through urban elements, affect our routines and our way of apprehending the world, trigger questions about the impact they can have on our way of thinking and acting.

These urban markers or «devices» – according to Agamben’s term – establish a set of binding rules, which guide and instruct individuals, as they allow «consolidating power relations».

In fact, «device» refers to any instrument capable of triggering a certain alienating discourse – according to Agamben. For the author, this device may originate from various means or a single person, with different contours, metamorphosing in its action. Art must be seen through contemporaneity, in the ability to dissociate itself from its time. And, with this distancing, unmasking that which covers it and makes it obscure.

Cut Down The Middle is on view at Galeria Avenida da Índia, in Lisbon, until June 13.