Founded in 2020 to house part of the State Contemporary Art Collection (CACE), following an exhibition cycle that borrows works from different private collections, the Centre for Contemporary Art of Coimbra (CACC) presents until June 18 Pose, curated by José Maçãs de Carvalho. Bringing together works by thirty-two artists from the State Contemporary Art Collection, deposited at the CACC, the Coimbra City Council Art Collection and from five private collections – Coleção Norlinda and José Lima; Coleção Isabel and Carlos; Coleção Rita and Gonçalo Lima; Coleção RC and Coleção LR – the show is rooted in the sign of the portrait, from narcissistic gestures to the pure awareness of self and the other[1]. The exhibition reflects an understanding of the importance of posing and portraiture, broadened to include self-portraiture, self-representation and aspects of personal identity throughout the history of art, as well as the individual’s consciousness of their own mortality and the survival of the work, whose etching of the face makes it possible to transform anguish in response to life’s ephemeral condition. The posed portrait is the ideal image of ourselves that will reach into the future, even without us[2].

The motivation for Pose is a result of the encounter with three paintings from the modern period, belonging to CACE and the Municipal Art Collection, which summarise the curatorial project and from which the exhibition unfolds: the conventional implementation of pose and realism in Retrato do Pintor José Contente, undated, by Frederico George (1915-1994), whose trace precisely defines the physiognomy; the broad brushstrokes and chromatic manipulations of black and brown and the psychological revelation of the portrayed in Dama da Boina, 1911, by Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro (1857-1929); the anthropological approach by Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1887-1918) in C/Mongol, 1917. The three portraits, on display in each CACC room, are three possible constellations coexisting with contemporary works by artists from a wide range of periods, styles and media – photography, painting, sculpture and drawing -, thereby corroborating one of the evidences of Art History: the enduring nature of stylistic codes when it comes to portraits.

The first floor features drawings in China ink on paper by Gaëtan (1944-2019), where the artist uses himself as a model, working on his own image. Focusing on self-representation, with variations on the same theme – his face – the drawings show different states of mind through quick and violent lines, spontaneous strokes and chiaroscuro play. On the side we see the powerful image of Amália’s sober and melancholic face, which Leonel Moura (1948) intervenes and manoeuvres, presenting her as a symbol of Portugal’s identity. This is not a portrait of the person, but of the icon of Portuguese culture and art, following a pop idiom that brings the artist close to Andy Warhol (1928-1987), whose 1975 portrait of Mick Jagger – with black, grey and yellow abstract stripes that seem to turn the print into a collage – can be seen in the same place. Next to Amália, we are enticed by the large-format black and white photograph S/título da série Inox (1995) by Molder (1947), in a work about duplicity and metamorphosis. From his own body in self-portrait, the artist crafts a character, a fictional figure who defiantly stares at us in a simple pose. Within the same room we see a critical discourse in the works Pigmentação de Portugal (2012) by Francisco Vidal (1978) and Compro logo existo, 2008 by Vihls (1981). In a splash of colour, Vidal features a female face on a map of Portugal, through which he tackles concepts of nation and identity, using a technique reminiscent of graffiti and urban art, making a curious connection with Vihls’ portrait on advertising billboards, critiquing the consumer society.

On the second floor, we are seduced by large-scale prints from Pierre Gonnord’s Regards series (1963), featuring dramatically lit faces whose heads emerge from black backgrounds like paintings, evoking portraits by Rembrandt, Velázquez, Vermeer or Caravaggio. The colour and light treatment and the choice of chiaroscuro add a disturbing and compelling aura to the portraits, where we see the crudeness and delicacy of the faces of Maki (2003) and Sonia II (2010), whose gazes apparently follow us into images that seem intent on becoming timeless. Within the photo prints resembling pictorial works by the Old Masters, we find the painting S/título, 2010, by Carlos Correia (1975-2018), from which he retrieves and reproduces Olympia (1863) by Manet. Using the image of a museum interior, the artist creates cut-out, shadowy silhouettes that ironically take the place of the viewer. Are we the ones who see the images or are they the ones who watch and question us? The portrait as a projection of ourselves, the role of the viewer and questions of identity are also explored in Douglas Gordon’s 2006 Self-portrait of you + me (Angus Young) (1966), whose portrait of the AC/DC guitarist, on a mirrored surface, challenges the visitors, making them part of the work and returning their own stare. The reference to the body’s presence, to the hiding and revealing of the face and identity are shown to us by Máscara, 2017 by Pedro Barateiro (1979), a notion of metamorphosis that we find again in Paula Rego’s (1935-2022) narrative and image-making ideology, in the maritime piece where she portrays a mermaid, a fantasy being, as a humanised creature. Contrasting with Paula Rego’s naïf and colourful environment, we highlight the spectral presence of Joaquim Bravo as a figure, an apparition, in Death comes in silence (homage to Joaquim Bravo), 1992, by João Paulo Feliciano (1963). This is a portrait that brings abandonment and isolation to mind.

On the last floor, Daniela Krtsch (1972) offers a moment of suspension in Please be quiet, please, 2020, where rest and silence are dominant forces, suggested by the body language of the boy portrayed, as well as by the deep, luminous chromaticism of a painting that portrays solitude and intimacy. We see the simple and depurated line of the charcoal drawing S/Título from the series Elastic Feelings, 2009, by Cecília Costa (1971), whose black line on the paper’s white background stresses the face’s transparency and the emptiness that distinguishes the figure between presence and absence. This waiting expressiveness is in other works by the artist: the two bodies that appear merged and whose faces are hidden, from the Solve (Solve together) series, 2011; the mysterious presence of a body silhouette drawn by successive strings. Evoking the face through blurring is in Assembleia Euclides, 2006, by Francisco Tropa (1968), a clay-on-paper blind drawing, a mask that is a reminder of ancestry. Next to it we find the emptiness in Pedro Cabrita Reis’ (1956) suspended, frontal and eyeless face in Os cegos de Praga, XV (1998), for whom the true representation of oneself would be to die when one could see. More than a self-portrait, the artist depicts an inward gaze, through which he explores interiority, the indefinable and the forbidden in a melancholic positioning towards the world. This melancholy is also found in the painting, between abstraction and figuration, by Andy Denzler (1965), revealing to us the distorted and suspended image in time of a female face in a forceful, mysterious and seductive action filled with nostalgia. To end the exhibition, the passing of time and death is unveiled to us in Let the dirt fall, let the heads roll, 2015, whose skull reminds us of the inevitability of it all. As a nostalgic and archaeological gesture, the skull that Paulo Brighenti (1968), moulds in sandstone and dyes with pigments, exploring the continuity and solidity of matter with the ephemeral, reminds us that we are mortal beings and that this will be our final portrait.

With Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso / Andy Denzler / Andy Warhol / António Júlio Duarte / Carlos Correia / Carlos Noronha Feio / Cecília Costa / Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro / Daniel V. Melim / Daniela Krtsch / Douglas Gordon / Edgar Martins / Francisco Tropa / Francisco Vidal / Frederico George / Gaëtan / João Paulo Feliciano / Jorge Molder / José António Quintanilha / José de Guimarães / José Loureiro / Júlio Pomar / Leonel Moura / Muntean & Rosenblum / Paula Rego / Paulo Brighenti / Pedro Amaral / Pedro Barateiro / Pedro Cabrita Reis / Pierre Gonnord / Tiago Baptista / VHILS /

[1] CARVALHO, José Maçãs de – POSE [Exhibition text].

[2] Idem