Catarina Lopes Vicente’s drawings appear first as soon as one enters the exhibition curated by Ricardo Escarduça, A Forma em Formação, facing the entrance to the Brotéria gallery.

Bearing in mind that drawing can serve very distinct purposes, we notice that the set of drawings displayed in the gallery pursue highly defined ends, focusing on the idea of drawing as an artistic activity, with an end in itself, and marked by “aesthetic principles”[1].

The artist believes that drawing, rather than being a support for an idea, is an open field where it is also possible to “experiment” freely and “aesthetically” [2].

Lopes Vicente’s series of drawings, perfectly aligned with the rest of the exhibition, reveals both a procedural [3] freedom, where there is room for “experimentation” and discovery, with no limits or restrictions [4], as well as a somewhat embryonic purpose, generating new paths yet to be travelled. It is also home to something yet to come, initiatory and promising.

One line sketched without a specific purpose, launching its journey, helps us to approach drawing itself as an autonomous art capable of evolving, rife with coincidences, surprises and unexpected events.

As an artistic field, drawing provides an unrestricted opportunity to forge new perceptive paths and break down the viewpoints that are addictive and put our senses to sleep when it comes to an urgency for creativity and looking beyond things.

Surrounded by the realisation that drawing is an enormous undertaking, the artist develops formal relationships between its elements and channels her energy into finding limitless creative territories.

Drawing is a powerful change-maker. It possesses the art of transfiguration, it is chameleon-like. It alters itself as much as it influences and transforms its surroundings or what is dependent on it.

Even the material, shaped by the artist with her own hands, displays this quest for realities to come, discoveries previously unthought of, for something that is not yet there, but is ready to erupt and be pronounced. The shapes laid out on the gallery floor, also by the same artist, hint at a permanent becoming, a constant transformation of matter.

Drawing is the swiftest means of communicating ideas in motion. The viscous material made of volcanic sand and glue, constantly carved and distorted by the artist’s hands, is indicative of the discipline of drawing in all its contours.

The senses are also fully awakened.

The immediate sound which is triggered by memories, or by the way we envision the pieces being crushed together in the warmth of the artist’s hands.

The scent of clay, brought on by Lopes Vicente’s forms, may also come to mind as it lies in our collective memory.

The scope of our references invariably conditions what we see and what we know.

Time, however, is not the same as that shared by the artists. On the other hand, Vera Mota’s installation reveals a captive, encapsulated time. Mota’s installation appears to be inscribed in the past. We see shapes that express an absence. Empty voids where beings once lived and where humans protected themselves.

The body is a protection. But the artist’s installation is entirely disintegrated. Some pieces, made of latex, paper and copper, resemble entrails and alert us to the fragility of existence.

Life is protected by a fine membrane.

Drawing, in this exhibition, is expressed in different ways. Its expression can be seen in a more conventional way, using its elements: point, line and stain, all on the flat surface of the support; we can watch its lines of force printed and traced on the volcanic sand, or through sound, as in Rui Horta Pereira’s video, where the whistles heard and dilated in the space shape, or induce, sonically, the drawing of curved lines folding over the gallery area.

Forma em Formação is on show at Brotéria until November 11.

[1] Rodrigues, Ana Leonor M. (2003). Desenho. Quimera Editores.
[2] Ibidem.
[3] Ibidem.
[4] Ibidem.