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Kaleidoscope at CABANAmad

As we walk into the Kaleidoscope exhibition, the place is overwhelmed by an intense light coming from the wide windows in the spacious CABANAmad room. The vibrant glow pervades the multicoloured, translucent pieces hanging on the wall. Long, languid, caramel-coloured birds stand in sharp contrast to the stains or traces left on the wall from earlier exhibitions in the gallery.

The blown glass birds, or Birds of Paradise, 2023, are by Dutch artist and glassblower Nienke Sikkema. Alongside these, Pedro Valdez Cardoso’s installation stands on the floor, featuring a set of beach chairs in a circular layout, made of blue fabric and embroidered in white tones. Plant motifs decorate the blue fabric of the chairs, drawing the visitor to bucolic landscapes and magical spots where time seems to drag on. The title of the installation is Slow, 2023.

The exhibition is divided into two rooms. The first one, right at the entrance, displays a triptych by Diogo Nogueira: a mixed media on canvas, entitled Está no Sangue, #1,#2,#3. The images are of moving human bodies against a blue background, in a natural environment dotted with trees and wild animals. Surrounding the triptych painting, two plates painted by the same artist, Lavar pratos em família #11, 2024, come into view around Nienke Sikkema’s group of lamps in blown glass entitled Parrot. The same artist offers two versions of birds: those intended to be enjoyed, as art; and others, also in the same glassy medium, performing roles usually attributed to the design field, such as objects intended to brighten up a space. Several sinuous and fluid kites rise up to reveal their translucent and colourful properties. The outside light intersects with the inside and generates a liquid and rippling effect, peppered with transparencies.

The wooden sculpture Paesaggio Attrezato (2024) is revealed as soon as we enter the second, more secluded room. Wooden pieces in different colours, some darker, others lighter, sit on a shelf mounted on the wall. Small mock-ups of houses, trees and bridges perch on the board. A hollow in the surface points to a location that can be used to store keys or other objects once someone arrives home. This is a shelf with multiple functions. Or none, if one wishes.

Matteo di Ciommo, author of Paesaggio Attrezato, handles wood by hand, building small landscape sculptures in which a sharp light and shadow play is also manifest, the likes of which can only be seen in Giorgio Chirico’s paintings.

The Kaleidoscope exhibition, as an open system, offers scope and freedom to multiply the meanings of what we see and the significance of the objects themselves. The second room is where other pieces, similarly vibrant and colourful, come to life, capturing and challenging the visitor’s eye. Miniature pots and jugs are displayed on a high plinth. Their varied colours and shapes call for renewed attention. Their variety asks for time to savour and delight. These untitled ceramic pieces (2024) come from Yuta Segawa and were hand painted.

Then we stop at the mirrors Grotti Portici III, IV, V (2024), by the studio Et.Tv.BRvte.Stvdio; the tapestry Mapa (2015) by Valdez Cardoso; the colourful Peacock (2011) by the same artist; and the virtuoso and helical object that contorts itself, made of stoneware and coloured pink, by the artist Roger Coll.

The Kaleidoscope exhibition shifts our perspective, and also our thinking, to that precise point where it becomes harder to pin down an object, or work of art, to a particular category. The exhibition offers just that, a fluid functionality “that challenges the definition of art object or design product”[1].

The invited designers and artists have engaged in a creative dialogue, challenging disciplinary frontiers[2]. As the exhibition says: “The works on display reveal stories of intertwined influences, in which design is nourished by artistic expression and art finds new forms through functionality”[3].

Vilém Flusser once said that the “world of objects, animate-inanimate, useful or useless, near or far, was fated to contain grey areas and gaps”[4]. All objects hold information. With the information age, the material world is becoming increasingly nebulous, ghostly and spectral. Everything is evolving towards the ebb and flow of ideas, identities and miscegenation.

The exhibition appears to embody this liquid, post-information age of non-things[5], as Flusser also pointed out. Even Bruno Munari, who urged an art for life, could describe exactly what is experienced in this exhibition: “a production of spiritually useful goods”[6].

Kaleidoscope is on show at CABANAmad until September 5, 2024.

 

[1] Valdez Cardoso, Pedro. Kaleidoscope exhibition text.
[2] Ibidem.
[3] Ibidem.
[4] Flússer, V. 1999. The Shape of Things, a philosophy of design. Reaktion Books, p. 85.
[5] Ibidem.
[6] Munari, Bruno, (2008) Design as Art. Penguin Books.

Carla Carbone was born in Lisbon, 1971. She studied Drawing in Ar.co and Design of Equipment at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Lisbon. Completed his Masters in Visual Arts Teaching. She writes about Design since 1999, first in the newspaper O Independente, then in editions like Anuário de Design, arq.a magazine, DIF, Parq. She also participates in editions such as FRAME, Diário Digital, Wrongwrong, and in the collection of Portuguese designers, edited by the newspaper Público. She collaborated with illustrations for Fanzine Flanzine and Gerador magazine. (photo: Eurico Lino Vale)

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