O Desenho como Pensamento: Ver no Escuro
Ver no Escuro is a group exhibition curated by Ana Anacleto, covering the exhibition grounds of Centro de Artes de Águeda, in the second edition of the exhibition and conversation cycle O Desenho como Pensamento, directed by Alexandre Baptista.
This exhibition, mainly essayistic in its core, is Ana Anacleto’s take on a text that could be regarded as the exhibition’s foreword and, as a result, the doorway to the curatorial concept used. It deals with Um Lugar a Menos, by Miguel-Manso, where the author refers to the “drawing of the drawing of the drawing”[1], between concepts such as support, gesture, consciousness, deletion and the condition of ongoing ineffectiveness in registering what is depicted. In this way, drawing is introduced to us as a gesture resonating in several realms, including on the other side of the support; ultimately, “to efface a drawing is to have it appear on the other side”[2]. These insights by Miguel-Manso come together with Jacques Derrida’s Memories of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, the name the philosopher gave to the exhibition he curated, thought up as a follow-up to a challenge from the Louvre Museum when, in the early 1990s, it planned a cycle of exhibitions curated by personalities external to the visual arts. Derrida discusses, among other things, the relationship between direct observation and the memory of what is observed – the benefits and drawbacks of seeing and drawing -, coming to a conclusion that the memory of what we see ultimately satiates its inevitable imperfection in the relationship with imagination. This is the confrontation that brings drawing to life. As such, Ver no Escuro invites us to do just that, with works by 26 artists who examine drawing in its broadest sense, but who, above all, are funambulists along the line that separates the consciousness of what is visible and the imagination that fulfils, distorts and alters it. Each piece plays with resistance, either emphasising or blurring the faint line along which the artist treads shakily. The drawing trying to become a word, as in Na Direcção da Luz, by Horácio Frutuoso, the drawing demanding its own space from reality through the line, as in Sem Título, by Gonçalo Barreiros, the questioning of the support, seen in Dayana Lucas’ Antropofagias II (1/3) and Noé Sendas’ Duschampian approach with Woman climbing the staircase (Frau de Treppe Hinaufsteight) are, together with all the other works, expanding, critical and (in)defining possibilities for drawing
Ver no Escuro is on view until September 30th. It features works by Alice Geirinhas, Ana Jotta, AnaMary Bilbao, Bruno Cidra, Carlos Noronha Feio, Catarina Lopes Vicente, Cláudia Guerreiro, Cristina Ataíde, Daniel Fernandes, Dayana Lucas, Diogo Bolota, Francisca Carvalho, Gonçalo Barreiros, Horácio Frutuoso, Isabel Carvalho, Joana Fervença, Jorge Queiroz, Mariana Gomes, Mattia Denisse, Noé Sendas, Pedro A. H. Paixão, Pedro Barateiro, Pedro Henriques, Rui Horta Pereira, Sara Bichão, Sara Chang Yan.
[1] Miguel-Manso (2012). Um Lugar a Menos. Lisbon: self-published. p.63
[2] Es.