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um gesto, todos os desenhos: Drawing as Thought

Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man became a landmark for the ideal of beauty and harmonious proportions in the human figure, following the concept of Marco Vitruvio Poliano. Formally speaking, this drawing depicts a male body with two arms and two legs. This doubling of the upper limbs suggests a certain idea of multiple gestures, directly or indirectly recognising that every gestural opportunity of the species can be found in human action. This is the exhibition’s curatorial leitmotif. A common, universal gesture, to draw, is given the most varied responses. The potential gesture and its power reflected in the final state, which in this case is the drawing on display.

If we recognise the existence of predictable, soporific gestures, art is the ultimate haven of unpredictable action (perhaps with the exception of its creator, the artist). With drawing, the theme addressed in this case, if we consider it as a sketch, a foretaste of something, its power is by itself immense and the ability of the initial gesture is utterly immense, right up to the point of its visibility, where a certain restriction is bound to arise. When viewed in contemporary terms, this artistic discipline reveals itself in its endless scope (a manual infinitude, if we return to Da Vinci’s drawing). The drawing itself is its obliteration, its reinvention, its elusiveness. Drawing is also the anonymity of that which apparently does not survive the sifting of visuality, but which actually becomes a sort of drawing beyond drawing.

This group exhibition, marking the launch of the third edition of the cycle O Desenho como Pensamento, is curated by João Silvério and organised by Alexandre Baptista, and the title, um gesto, todos os desenhos, was the very starting point for this article. João Silvério boils down his curatorial thinking to the notion that ‘in every body movement lies an idea of drawing or an idea drawn, even if involuntarily’[1] and that the symbolic and subjective apprehension of reality draws the world of each and every one of us. The multiple works on display and their relationship with the expanded field of drawing reflect this very fact.

João Silvério considers the work Universal Declaration of Human Rights and an image of beauty converted into binary code (cyan version) (2014-2015), by João Onofre, to be the foundation of the curatorial principle. This is a work in which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is translated into binary language. Apart from the dimension of the Declaration itself, we are dealing with a piece that is a drawing in its consequence, in its collateral nature.

Drawing is shown throughout the exhibition with our historical plurality, in a conceptual expansion that perhaps reaches its pinnacle in Pedro Tudela’s sound sculpture DesVia. In this audible work, we can perceive, in a loop, a pencil falling to the ground.

On view at Centro de Artes de Águeda until February 9, 2025. With Ana Caetano, André Almeida e Sousa, Carlos Figueiredo, Catarina Marques Domingues, Conceição Abreu, Francisca Aires Mateus, Helena Valsecchi, João Onofre, José Drummond, Juliana Matsumura, Leonor Neves, Maíra Ortins, Miguel António Domingues, Nikolai Nekh, Pedro Tudela, Rita Gaspar Vieira, Susana Mendes Silva, Tomaz Hipólito and Vasco Barata.

 

[1] From the text on the exhibition’s room by João Silvério.

Daniel Madeira (Coimbra, 1992) has a degree in Artistic Studies from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra and a Master's in Curatorial Studies from the Colégio das Artes at the same university. Between 2018 and 2021, he coordinated the Exhibition Space and the Educational Project of the Águeda Arts Center. Currently, he collaborates with the Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra (CAPC).

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