On November 5, I attended the talk about the anthological exhibition Debaixo da pele by the artist Miguel Telles da Gama, on show between July 6 and December 31 at Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon.

Rita Lougares, the museum’s artistic director, guided the informal conversation alongside the artist, as well as José Luís Porfírio and João Silvério, where the exhibition was the focus. As well as commenting on the artist’s work, they offered some insights and comments on Telles da Gama’s work.

Debaixo da pele arose from the challenge proposed by the museum’s artistic director to hold an anthological exhibition of the artist, even before the pandemic. But it only happened this summer. The premise of an anthology is to exhibit the best examples of an artist’s work, giving the fullest representation of his career. However, for the curator José Luís Porfírio, this exhibition is not intended to be a summary, but a new work, built from previous fragments of his oeuvre. The curator’s choice was partially biased, influenced by the artist. For him, he and Porfírio “speak the same language”.

Miguel Telles da Gama (Lisbon, 1965) has exhibited regularly since the early 90s. His work, according to José Luís Porfírio, is that of an abstract painter working on figuration. From the beginning of his career, already with the exhibition Arremessos, at Galeria Novo Século, Telles da Gama has approached figuration as a language. Despite this, his figuration respects the order of the fragments, as his working method starts from the idea that everything has already been invented in the world. Colours, images and even words. Although, in principle, not everything has been said. Could that be?

The exhibition is on the ground floor of Museu Coleção Berardo, above the (also anthological) exhibition Abstracto, Branco, Tóxico e Volátil by Julião Sarmento. The artist, who died last year, also worked exquisitely with fragmented signs to compose unknowable signifiers.

In the 80s and 90s, many artists felt the impact of mainstream cinema and experimental video art. Especially in Portugal, which lived under the Salazar regime until 1974, where censorship was institutionalised, and films on exhibition suffered abrupt cuts (or were not screened at all). After the country’s liberation, the intense use of fragmented images flourished in a generation that had grown up limited.

We cannot claim that this trend was a new phenomenon. It is a human inclination to resort to the montage and superimposition of images. Something verifiable from the Chauvet cave to the Kuleshov effect. But, from the 1980s onwards, the use of fragmentation in figurative language became more common in Portugal.

Or perhaps this coincided with Telles da Gama’s work.

The exhibition was based on the notion that the skin is equivalent to Italo Calvino’s idea of the ‘smooth page’^[1] in The Nonexistent Knight, “where we can find everything: images, words and colours in various forms and consistencies”^[2]. According to the exhibition text, there is a ‘transformative drive’ in the brush that uses what exists, manipulating, cutting, concealing, or disappearing.

Disappearance was a constant theme during the conversation. In Miguel Telles da Gama’s art, disappearing is more important than appearing.

The exhibition’s itinerary began with Azul Profundo (2014). After the most recent pieces – 70 ex-votos por uma vida sexualmente animada (2021) – we entered a labyrinth with words by Lou Reed in Vanishing Act (2016), felt the central vertigo in the armours of Lux in Tenebris (2018), the graphic images of the period between 2003 and 2004, Reserva de caça (1990), a narrative with paintings in Emotional Rescue (2007) and the confrontation with Perrault’sTales in Passing Through the Red (2013), “a character drama in search of an author in Encenações (1999-2003)”^[3]

We highlight three moments. Lux in Tenebris (2018), a work that was already the sole subject of the artist’s last solo exhibition in 2018 at Fundação Portuguesa de Comunicações. Lux in Tenebris, besides a Brecht play and bible verse, is also the title of Telles da Gama’s series of acrylics on paper, representing some fragments of shining armour seen inside an intimate eyepiece. The rough images do not allow the viewer to know clearly whether the armour is inhabited or not. This causes mystery and excitement. Do the armours belong to the same person? Or are they frames from a large army? We will never know.

But it was a wise decision to display them inside an octagonal enclave, adding a mausoleum feel to the series. Especially as they are exhibited under low light, a curatorial decision made at the last minute (according to José Luís Porfírio), in counterpoint to Paulo Abreu’s video.

Reserva de caça (1990) is an interesting piece, not only because it is central to the artist’s work, but also because it goes back to the beginning of his career.

70 ex-votos por uma vida sexualmente animada (2021), the most recent work in his anthology, needs no comment. Although it is eye-catching, the real interest of the first room is in the opposite work Sem título (2005).

An anthological exhibition is invariably considered the epitome of an artist’s career, not only because of the logistical effort involved in bringing together in a single venue the best works of his entire life. But also because it represents the artist’s recognition, especially in one of the country’s largest contemporary art institutions.

One of the greatest assets of Miguel Telles da Gama’s work is to arouse questions in the spectator, to take him out of the ordinary place of certainties, invoking the unknown.

Debaixo da pele, he establishes the tabula rasa of permanent doubt, conveying the idea that there is always something left unsaid. Using the fragmentation of figurative language, I ask:

– Is there still something left unsaid?

^[1] talo Calvino, O Cavaleiro Inexistente (Lisbon: Editorial Teorema, 2002).

^[2] José Luís Porfírio, Miguel Telles da Gama Debaixo da Pele (Museu Coleção Berardo, 2022)

^[3] Ibidem, 2022