Imagine that turning left does not necessarily mean heading right and that suddenly coming from below does not imply going upwards. A mathematical concept reflecting the ultimate paradox, where time and space dimensions do not construct reality – let alone guide it. A non-orientable surface, a concept that bears the same name as the exhibition on view until April 27 at Palácio Vila Flor in Guimarães, focuses on the lack of consistency in traditional concepts of orientation, creating fertile ground for conceptual innovations. To keep in this direction, we will build the narrative that constitutes this exhibition based on key moments, not necessarily sequentially arranged, but within a rationale of intersecting stories, just like our memories, or like the jazz flow.

Perpendicularly

The Guimarães Project Room, set up by cultural producer Pedro Silva, is designed to get to know, chart and present the makers of plastic and visual arts and new media who have a relationship of birth, work or academia with the city of Guimarães. This project aims to fill the gap in Guimarães’ understanding of the contemporary art scene. The intention is to unite two aspects: its artistic milieu and a venue that gives it visibility. By combining the two, a mapping of the city’s contemporary creation has been generated since 2021.

The preamble

When a strip has its edges intertwined, it forms a cylindrical structure that hovers without openings, exposing an inner and outer side that never meet. But if that same strip is twisted in a half-turn before connecting its ends, the cylindrical geometric figure ceases to exist, becoming the Moebius Strip, a shape that appears to have two sides – much like the cylinder -, but only one edge with no beginning or end. A non-orientable surface is formed.

A prelude

Diogo Martins and João Melo, engaged in an ongoing artistic endeavour in the municipality of Fundão in 2022, turned their attention to the mining legacy of Beira Baixa, examining the concept of extractivism, originally tied to extracting mineral resources, but which today also embraces other practices, such as data mining. By using sculpture, along with audiovisual and photogrammetric registers of the architectural areas of a complex of mines, Martins and Melo have built a fictitious and speculative narrative to capture the digital geology that shapes our identity and free will.

The surface forms a window

Mariana Maria Rocha’s widely explored identity logic is distinctly revealed in its relationship with the time and memory contexts, more specifically identity and the notion of exuviae and its relationship with the fragment, the fear of oblivion and the absent presence.

Permeable path

The Moebius Strip may be employed as a metaphor for how the subject is constructed in relation to the surrounding world, since, due to its never-ending surface, identity wanders between inside and outside, with no specific place for its development.

The Spark

The project was conceived in early 2023 when Ivo Martins and Centro Cultural Vila Flor (CCVF) presented a challenge to three emerging artists – Diogo Martins, João Melo and Mariana Maia Rocha – to jointly collaborate on an exhibition to be included in the programme at Palácio Vila Flor in Guimarães.

The Crossroads

As the project moved forward, there was a chance to combine two curatorial projects in a single venue, leading to an invitation to Guimarães Project Room to join CCVF in coproducing the exhibition. This meeting allowed artists Diogo Martins, João Melo and Mariana Maia Rocha to work alongside Igor Gonçalves, first in a residency, which culminated in Non-Orientable Surfaces.

The Interstices

Igor Gonçalves’ interventions are built on the principle of blurring boundaries. Inspired by the dialogue between light and shadow, Gonçalves activates them as the leading characters in a visual narrative. Deconstructing dichotomies is not just a theoretical concept, but a principle pervading every aspect of his artistic endeavours. His works defy entrenched notions of opposition, probing the boundaries between the intrinsic and the extrinsic, the opaque and the transparent, the private and the public, the physical and the symbolic. New possibilities unfold in this liminal space, where boundaries break down.

The Palace

The eighteenth-century Palácio Vila Flor became Centro Cultural Vila Flor, a prominent place on the national cultural landscape, opened in 2005, allowing Guimarães to be included in the country’s cultural routes. The exhibition rooms of Centro Cultural are located inside Palácio Vila Flor, covering an area of about 1.000 m2, where exhibitions by contemporary artists are regularly held.

The dynamics

Diogo Martins and João Melo present a series of works on the first floor of the exhibition, many of which were collaboratively crafted. The first space features a set of paintings and sculptures where ceramics merge with unforeseen elements such as mechanical, electronic and audiovisual devices. These pieces have a metamorphic aspect in their relationship with identity, evolution and resistance. Next up is the multimedia installation Undercurrents, which reflects on the nature of extractivism in modern times, drawing parallels between various commodities and extraction processes, from the exploitation of mineral resources to data mining in the digital world.
In the first space, there is an ensemble where ceramics merge with unexpected elements such as mechanical, electronic and audiovisual devices.

Living Ruins

Mariana Maia Rocha applies the frottage technique as a drawing process in works made during the project’s residency, in specific and direct reference to the city’s walls, stressing the idea of touch and direct contact between the artist’s body and the surfaces. I would especially single out the piece Exosqueleto e a Corporalidade do Toque (2023-2024), which includes LED lights and frottage drawings inspired by the artist’s grandmother’s clothes – a way of testifying to her absent presence through her garments. Maia Rocha also touches on the notion of exuviae and ecdysis, scientific processes in which animals shed their skin, leaving behind a previous hide as if it were a trail: in Pós-animal e Pós-Industrial I, II, III (2024), the leather (from a former Guimarães tannery) is there as the skin of one animal that is now worn by another. The leather’s punctures also mimic bullets and gunshots, building at the same time holes through which we can peek at the other.

Contamination

Gonçalves’ work is exo, but nevertheless intro. He perceives, through paper’s textures and externalisations vis-à-vis the environment, the deepest cavity of that which exists. In endless stratifications, he creates an encounter with the in-between with other skins. “Each work is a tangible proof of the passage of time, where organic wear and tear traces intertwine with the material. Igor Gonçalves operates in a fluid continuum, with no defined starting point or final destination.” Apart from his pieces on display in the rooms, he also creates Pulso, present on the second floor, setting the pace and determining the viewer’s perception, filling them with interest.

Palacete

Palacete has an exhibition running alongside what is on show at Palácio, about the processes that enabled this exhibition to happen in the first place.

Eight Hands

As well as there being four artists, four curators worked to bring this exhibition to such fertile conceptual ground. Irene Pedras, Ivo Martins, Marta Mestre and Pedro Silva stress in the exhibition’s text the importance of experimenting, made possible by the residency prior to the assemblages, and which is reflected in their own journey: “the exhibition adopts a supple, elusive and counterintuitive architecture as a platform to dismantle and break new ground, stringing together actions, ideas, sensations and memories”.
For Ivo Martins, “exploring these opposites requires us to consider that we are always returning to a beginning; not necessarily the beginning of the issues dealt with, but the beginning of things to come”.

Non-Orientable Surfaces is on show until April 27 at Palácio Vila Flor.