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Surface Disorder by Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, Electric Jungle Fever by Vivian Caccuri and As in heaven, so on earth by Rita Caldo at Galeria Municipal do Porto

Three exhibitions are on display at Galeria Municipal do Porto (GMP): Surface Disorder by Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, Electric Jungle Fever by Vivian Caccuri and As in heaven, so on earth by Rita Caldo. These shows unveil a new programme cycle for the institution, under João Laia’s artistic management. Topics related to ecology, cutting-edge technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and post-humanism are common traits of all the proposals. These productions feature installations and immersive atmospheres, stressing haptic and sensory perception to the detriment of the eye-centric and Renaissance perspective. Likewise, sound environments, music and the performing arts are prioritised as a way of encompassing all contemporary artistic expressions and practices.

Jonathan Uliel Saldanha’s Surface Disorder, curated by João Laia, challenges us with contemporaneity, starting from the premise that the fear felt by Western society is a catalyst for monsters. Unknown entities that reside in each of us and materialise in everything foreign, such as Artificial Intelligence, other human beings or non-human beings. Everything flows into this vortex of anxiety: the degradation of ecosystems, the legitimisation of overwhelming ideologies, the escalation of armed conflicts, or the implementation and taming of sophisticated technological systems.

On Floor 0 of GMP, Jonathan Uliel Saldanha sets up an obscure, labyrinthine and sinister installation environment, with monsters, yet enhancing the fabrication of brighter worlds. As Laia put it in the curatorial text: ‘The monsters inhabiting Jonathan Uliel Saldanha’s twilight universe are embodied as empathic opportunities to inhabit the world, in which we are aware of the pits and traps of the present moment in its relationship with past dynamics, but where, at the same time, other ways of being and becoming are made possible and unfold in front of us.

In Surface Disorder we step into a sci-fi world where we meet bizarre and mutant bodies. Arcanjos Capital, or Anjos Kawasaki Antropomórficos made through the deconstruction of a motorbike, are hybrid figures with a reflective surface, magnified by colourful light beams. In another sense, the installation Sistema-L Ovo Camuflagem invites us to step into a sort of cave, with vegetation, blinding lights and a reflective floor, as if we were being swallowed by a foreign body, growing like a fungus.

The centrepiece of Surface Disorder is Torre do Basilisco (2024). A structure powered by an Artificial Intelligence screening mechanism, which marshals two pieces on display. Campo de Vídeo Aglomerado, a triptych screen on which the artist’s videos can be viewed, and Diálogo Vírus-Lobo (2024), two screens on which artificial beings, a wolf and the rabies virus, seduce each other through an Artificial Intelligence-generated dialogue.

Finally, Glaciar do Futuro (2024) looks like the emergence of a mountain covered in ice. Made of fabric, its presence is both imposing and light and oscillating. Possibly a reminder that, for now, glaciers are part of our ecosystem, but that in the future they will need to be imagined. A peek into the worlds that can be envisioned when faced with the volatility and insecurity of contemporaneity.

Vivian Caccuri’s Electric Jungle Fever, curated by Bernardo José de Souza, urges us to listen, to experience the hum of mosquitoes flying through tropical forests and shapeless, chaotic cities, frequently sending us into a feverish state. A fever that overwhelms us with delirious heat, that dazzles and inebriates us when faced with reality, but also with history. That of the enslaved bodies and the colonisers on the slave ships, travelling from the African to the American continent, carrying mosquitoes with them and a host of feverish ailments.

On the exhibition’s title page, the curator stresses the importance of sound for Caccuri, as the heart of the artist’s aesthetic and political research: «Sound as a key element in life, both as a form of communication between species and as a language, such as music, an artistic expression that rallies humanity, both in its ritualistic experiences and in its hedonistic utterances.»

Electric Jungle Fever, on GMP’s First Floor, surrounds us in a feverish atmosphere. In Gatonet-Mor (2024), Caccuri turns technological elements such as electric cables, loudspeakers, solid concrete blocks and computers into jungle-like forms emanating mosquito sounds. A body of sound consisting of noises from a Brazilian scientific archive and Artificial Intelligence sounds. In contrast, in Skin Shield (2024), Fantasia da Ordem (2024) and Fantasma Poeira (2018), the Brazilian artist draws contrasts through the finesse, lightness and transparency of the mosquito nets, shields against insects – used by colonisers on their raids into the rainforests – adorned with needlework, sound wave reproductions of buzzing animals, piano keys or soundtracks. It emphasises the significance of hearing and the haptic experience over vision and the ocular-centric perspective.

Caccuri intertwines cultural and natural antagonisms, conceptualises relationships between humanity and mosquitoes, promotes transnational links and fuses connections between different ideologies. Threads that conduct electricity or internet network cables in rhizomatic form, boosting other roots and branches, other sounds and ways of understanding and feeling the world.

Rita Caldo’s As in heaven, so on earth, curated by Patrícia Coelho, debuts a new space at GMP, on Floor 1, centred on exhibition projects by artists making their debut in the institutional sphere.

The young artist from Porto displays an ethereal, vibrant and magical installation atmosphere, as if it were a dream dotted with chimerical figures from fables, circus shows or variety fairs. Figures crafted using cold ceramic modelling and painting, sewing, embroidery or macramé. Masks, sculptures and figurative distortions that tell stories, unfolding in the set design space. Each piece has its own narrative, with no beginning, middle or end. They are delirious musings, thoughts or daydreams of a sort of irony and comicality, delineating a fluctuating imagination. The curator says in the text which accompanied the exhibition, «Rita Caldo reflects on the abyss of language between the world we know and the one we fantasise about. This is perhaps why the wish to transcend and find a liberating place in the cosmos is a constant throughout the exhibition».

The very title of the exhibition alludes to something limbic, to a place between two states of consciousness, somehow extradimensional, like the ‘red room’ in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1992). Between heavenly and earthly, unconscious and conscious, dream and reality. Nonetheless, it makes it possible for both to cross paths, in the chance for our fantasies to be made real.

In As in heaven, so on earth, questions of duality go beyond space and can also be found in the self-sculpture Rita (2019) or the body-sculptures Arrozinho, Arrozeiro(s) (2022). These pieces offer a sense of metamorphosis, a questioning of identity and the fact that nothing is veiled or watertight. On the other hand, Preciosos (2024), with a sound structure in collaboration with António Feteira, is a music box-shaped piece driven by small playful figures, adding sound to the the surroundings, and further enhancing the fantastical set design. Finally, the outdoor piece Nas nuvens (2024) brings some of Rita’s imagination to the gallery’s courtyard, a reminder that utopia is always possible.

Surface Disorder is on show until February 16, 2025 at Galeria Municipal do Porto. During the second half of the year, it will be displayed in Lisbon, in the context of the partnership with Galerias Municipais in the city. Electric Jungle Fever is on show until March 23, 2025 and As in heaven, so on earth until March 2, 2025.

Ana Martins (Porto, 1990) currently working as a researcher at i2ADS – Instituto de Investigação em Arte, Design e Sociedade, with a fellowship granted by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (2022.12105.BD) to atende the PhD in Fine Arts at Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto. Already holding a MA in Art Studies – Museological and Curatorial Studies from the same institution. With a BA in Cinema from ESTC-IPL and in Heritage Management by ESE-IPP. Also collaborated as a researcher at CHIC Project – Cooperative Holistic view on Internet Content, supporting the incorporation of artist films into the portuguese National Cinema Plan and the creation of content for the Online Catalog of Films and Videos by Portuguese Artists from FBAUP. Currently developing her research project: Cinematic Art: Installation and Moving Images in Portugal (1990-2010), following the work she started with Exhibiting Cinema – Between the Gallery and the Museum: Exhibitions by Portuguese Filmmakers (2001-2020), with the aim to contribute to the study of installations with moving images in Portugal, envisioning the transfer and specific incorporation of structural elements of cinema in the visual arts.

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