Any Chafes’ sculpture only reminds one of a Chafes’ sculpture[1], we recall Isabel Carlos’ words about the unique, singular and authorial art of Rui Chafes (1967), while visiting the exhibition Chegar sem partir, curated by Inês Grosso and Philippe Vergne, coordinated by Filipa Loureiro, conceived for the Serralves Museum and Park. It is not a retrospective, but a revisiting of key moments in the artist’s career over the years. The exhibition, conceived in dialogue with Rui Chafes, presents inside the building, through various environments/stations, sensory and mental experiences that confront viewers with the space, with the works and with themselves. Included are pieces from the early stages of his career, as well as those conceived specifically for the exhibition. We see dualities that espouse the sculptor’s work: silence/emptiness; presence/absence; life/death.

The relationship with the absent body and the impossibility of its definitive representation, something constant throughout his work, follow us throughout the exhibition chapters. We highlight the masks from the series Cristal,1996-97 which simultaneously protect, hide and wound, imprisoning and limiting the body. This constraint and tension are also in the sculptures of the Balthazar series, which, mimicking leather and equestrian instruments, are displayed as trophies in the museum hall. In addition to the physical demand of the artist’s work, whose sculptures he welds and forges in a union between iron and fire, painting them black and grey to nullify them as matter, there is also the colour of his intimate drawings. Chegar sem partir is also in the Serralves gardens. The artist’s work is in dialogue with the Park and the museum’s natural surroundings. Sometimes camouflaged in nature, it triggers unexpected encounters, such as Was erschreckt Dich so?,2008; Mouchette, 2009; Volúpia Prudente, indómita fome, 2000 or Lua exausta, 2000.

On an introductory note, to the exhibition, we begin the journey with a piece from the Serralves collection, Sudarium, 2018. The idea of shroud, the fabric that wraps the body, mentioned in the title, goes beyond the material – iron. The way the sculptural object is suspended in the void resembles hanging sheets of fabric, solidified in space. While we observe it, we let ourselves be seduced by the light and organic layout, by the delicacy of the folds and movements. We forget the weight of the material used.  As if it had just taken shape, Sudarium has an intensity embodied in space, between weight and lightness, rigidity and fluidity. The visitor is surprised. The sculpture that is not only object, but its relationship with our body and the idea of the body as blindness, are aspects of Tranquilidade ferida do sim, faca do não, 2000/2013. The darkness in the exhibition room, which the artist transforms into an optical device, provides a corporeal, sensorial and visual experience. The difficulty in moving through the unknown, the silence and the feeling of loneliness follow us while the initial blindness disappears to show the presence of shadows in the space. Five sculptures rhythmically arranged high above the ground remind us of gothic architecture. They appear in the darkness as a revelation, in an almost sacral area, inhabited by silence and emptiness. It is an immersive, metaphysical and solitary experience. Tranquilidade ferida do sim, faca do não confronts us with the tension and idea of discomfort, of wound, light and shadow, the invisible and visible. We have complete awareness of space and suspension of time. We recall Rui Chafes’ words about his artistic practice:

“My work is based on terms and principles that seem absolutely ignored by contemporaneity: silence and shadow, stillness, religion and myth, beauty and the impossibility of it, solitude, pain, death and serenity, the suspension of time, the stopping of time during speed.” [2]   

The suspension of time and space is something found again in Não quando os outros olham II, 1996, in the small shoes forgotten in the room. Slightly raised, on tiptoe, slightly touching the floor, the shoes indicate an absence. They remind us of an invisible body in the void, which becomes a gesture. We explore the relationship between colour, body and immateriality in the installation A não ser que te amem, 1987, a piece executed by the artist when he was 21 and a student of fine arts, before starting to work with iron. Remade and adapted for Serralves, the almost environmental installation, which occupies almost all its space, confronts the body of the spectators, swallowing them up in the installation and in its strong blue colour. People are forced to move between the sensuality, malleability and organicity of Platex’s curved forms. Between physical and spiritual, we experience colour and immerse ourselves in a watery environment created by the blue light, dematerialising the forms and changing the shade of our skin. The sculptures are the space, the space is the sculpture[3], a correlation revealed once again in Burning in a forbidden sea, 2011. The grandiose iron sculpture, suspended in the centre of the white room with green lighting, is accompanied by Orla Barry’s sound work. All this creates an immersive atmosphere, and the work becomes shamanic. In a small room next door, whose windows have been covered at the artist’s request, preventing any point of escape to the outside[4], in a focused gesture, we observe a new work by Chafes, entitled Sem nascer nem morrer, 2022. Suspended at different heights from the ground, recalling the idea of falling, the sculptures surprise us by their apparent lightness, where the iron is almost ethereal. We walk among the works, the shadows float in an intense black. There are almost organic forms that remind us of armour, shells, suspended cocoons, envelopes that recall the physicality of absence, something that has disappeared. This is the continuation of the artist’s investigation into the relationship between interior and exterior, being and non-being, full and empty.

The dialogue with Serralves’ architecture is again visible in the last work inside the museum, Medo não medo, 1988-98. It is a drawing and happening in space, which invades it like lightning bolts, coming to life along the corridor designed by Álvaro Siza. Like a moving figure stopped in time, in tension against the wall, the site-specific installation has a performative side. The body of the visitor, a person who stops being a spectator to become a participant, must move throughout the work. Chafes creates a fragile and tense moment, as we perceive that the steel bars are supported by golf balls at their ends. This is an unstable balance. The imminent fall of an object suspended between permanence and disappearance. This concept is found again in the work that gives the exhibition its title, Chegar sem partir, 2022, conceived for this context and installed in the garden at the museum entrance. The idea of circular time, of repeated movements in space, is materialised in the enormous conical structure, raised like a whirlwind. It is a hurricane of swirling paper leaves, which threaten to fly through the gardens.

Contrasting with the white exterior wall that supports them, two vertical black iron elements, each eight metres high, surprise us with their grandiosity and minimalism. In an unlikely and unstable balance, Tu e eu, 2022, hidden, coupled – in dialogue with architecture – seem like a couple of lovers whose heads touch at an angle in Pátio do Limoeiro. We conclude the route with the underground work Travessia, 2022, created by Chafes for Passeio da Levada, which will be permanently installed in the park. We cross its interior, like a body in which we make the crossing, along a winding, dark path, reminiscent of the tension felt in the dark room inside the museum. As our steps echo in the concrete, in a highly sensorial experience, we see a sculpture suspended and slightly illuminated by a small eyepiece. Chafes recalls the relationships between art, architecture and spirituality, architecture and temple, shelter and sanctuary, sacred and profane. As an epilogue between light and darkness, Travessia reveals the yearning that his works have for light, sculptures that are negatives, shadows, but also containers of light, because black is the absorption of light.[5]

Chegar sem partir by Rui Chafes is on view at the Serralves Foundation – Museum of Contemporary Art until February 26, 2023.

[1] CARLOS, Isabel – O Peso do Paraíso, Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão, 2014.

[2] CHAFES, Rui – O silêncio de ….Lisbon: Assírio & Alvim, 2006. p.94.

[3] VERGNE, Philippe – “L’oeuvre au noir” in RUI CHAFES: CHEGAR SEM PARTIR. Porto: Fundação de Serralves, 2022, p.18.

[4] Quote from the artist during the press tour on July 20, 2022.

[5] Quote from Inês Grosso during the press tour on July 20, 2022.