In Bartolomeu Santos’ Friend and Foe, the emphasis is apparently on the copulative conjunction “and”, establishing an affinity and complicity between the antagonistic concepts “friend” and “ foe”. This results in a range of possibilities rejected by the dualisms that modernism has nurtured, as well as by the partitioning of knowledge and practices into so-called disciplines. The question of fragmentation – conceptual, material, spatial, temporal, etc. – arising from this modern duality that shapes reality is no longer anything new in Bartolomeu Santos’ conceptual and creative work. In Emotional Derbies (Duelos Emotionais) – on display between December last year and January 2024 at Galeria Plato in Évora – the weight of the choices; the tension between the dualities that drive these choices to the extreme; and the complicity of disparity form a duel (material, marginal, transversal) that seems to reach a stalemate in this exhibition. The deadlock is not mediality, much less conformity, but rather liminality, ambiguity, or the chance of friendship through conversation, rather than the negation of opposition through dispute.

In the wake of this discourse, of ambivalent or friendly possibilities, suggested by Bartolomeu for Galeria Foco – or for the works he takes there -, it is worth clarifying how the artist conceptualises this statement in the scope of his material production. They are sponges. Sponges, which are nothing new in Bartolomeu’s conceptual materiality, both in The Colours Remain the Same after the Sequence (2021) and in Emotional Derbies (2023). Whilst in these previous series the sponges adopt the form of the external materialities that tamed and subdued them – albeit less in the vacuum bags in Emotional Derbies than in the glass boxes in The Colours Remain the Same after the Sequence -, they emerge in Galeria Foco by means of other friendships that do not shut down their ‘agency’, but transform it by asserting material reciprocity. The dialogue between the sponge, the epoxy and the artist’s own plastic volition leads to works that are shaped by these complicit conversations – where none of the elements appear on their own, but rather through the ‘whole’ that now is. While Bartolomeu may show us the staples and the plywood, and we may even recognise the epoxy and the acrylic paint -, the sponge is no longer notable and we are instead identifying the encounter rather than the confrontation of the constituents. Friendship comes from this encounter, which then opens the way to the possibility of the new. In a way, the sponges on display seem to be a showcase for Murano crystals. The idea is not to glamorise the banal, but the chance of ambiguity, mutability and the opportunity for dialogue, encounter, friendship and reciprocity – in the banal.

Earlier this year, the artist was already telling us: ‘’I was in the studio this week and (I remembered) how significant it is that there are several species living together in the forest. If I translate that into my practice, I can say that works or ideas for them are born from each other. Even when I consider that I’m going to do ‘new’ work, I notice that it is intrinsically bound up with others… like the forests.” Bartolomeu’s vision is the devising of a contact zone – where the marginal effect occurs – within his creative space, the studio. In ecology[1] (the science studying the relationship between living beings and their environment), the marginal effect provides an opportunity for considerable creativity. This effect occurs in an ecotone, a transitional space between two or more distinct communities of living beings. This is where contacts take place between multiple neighbouring species. Its wealth resides around the fact that it often contains both organisms from neighbouring communities and, in addition, organisms specific to the ecotone itself, which are born from the confluence of these neighbouring communities. For instance, edges and margins. This means that. in the ecotone, the number of species is always greater than in neighbouring communities, effectively making it richer and more complex than the original communities. Ecotones are built because the community is heterogeneous, fragmented and discontinuous. Therefore, fragmentation – which is also comprised of modernity’s own duality – ceases to be a negative feature and instead promotes a set of opportunities for continuous (re)creation. Are these not the very spaces where it is still possible to meet the other?

Indeed, we found many others at Galeria Foco, conceived within the possibilities of the studio as a contact zone. And what is contact if not the approach to or internalisation of exteriority? And what is contact if not ‘and’? Bartolomeu Santos, friend and foe, awaits contact for a decision, something he argues is always a reason for conciliation. He leaves us with the possibility of friendship, which always starts from the exteriority of the self. Ontologically speaking, ‘the friend would be the one who, as another from oneself (a heteros autos), completes the unity outside oneself’[2].

With friends like that, who needs enemies? Bartolomeu Santos’ Friend and Foe, curated by Julia Flamingo, is at Galeria Foco until October 19, 2024.

[1] Odum, E. (1997). Fundamentals of Ecology. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
[2] Chiara, J. (2020). “ENSAIO, um outro Modo de Dizer Amigo: Escrita e amizade na filosofia.” Rede Brasileira de Mulheres Filósofas. Available in <https://www.filosofas.org/post/ensaio-um-outro-modo-de-dizer-amigo-escrita-e-amizade-na-filosofia>.