Espiral, the title of Ana Manso and André Romão’s exhibition at Lisbon’s Appleton gallery, describes the movement from which the relationship between Ana Manso’s painting and André Romão’s sculpture turns out to be one of communication.[1] After recognizing the spiral as a dialoguing structure – whereby distance is always turned into proximity, by defining a center – between painting (on the wall) and sculpture (in the area where we circulate in the room) – we are forced to confirm the existence of both an inside and an outside. Ana Manso’s canvases are shown along four walls. These walls are covered in gray, shapeless lines, mimicking the outline of a painting intended to be total, to the degree of opacity or even the purported (admittedly whimsical) whiteness of a unit, or ultimately just the representation of vibrations, which, depending on the bells and rattles in Romão’s pieces, could be sound vibrations. Painting on the wall can either suggest an incomplete or a truthful translation (as vague as it is forthright and passionate) of an environment. Be that as it may, Ana Manso’s abstract and colorful paintings cut through the gray – more or less translucent, more or less closed – of the uneven pattern on the walls to present various landscapes which, in stark contrast with the wall’s background, impress with their illusion of speed. One finds oneself as if inside a locomotive. The walls are the billowing smoke that obstructs the landscape, notwithstanding the fact that this is the visual cue of the engine essential to movement, as well as being the tonal hallmark responsible, not least by contrast, for the glittering splendor of the pictorial frames. Opposite us, by André Romão’s fingers, men and women are sleeping – the gender is unknown; they are people, that’s all that matters. There is a fox sleeping at the foot of one of the two bodies stretched out on boards. Like the gender of these sleeping travelers, it is not clear whether the fox is part of a hybrid being – half human, half animal -, the dawn of a new mythological figure, the narrative’s return, or, on the other hand, a fellow traveler. The piece deals with the ambiguity between existence and being: to exist as two or to exist together. The idea is to establish community as a basic principle of the journey, of crossing different landscapes, of acknowledging a body in a territory that is not always its own, to the exact extent that to be is to somehow always inhabit another origin. The journey is used here as a metonymic metaphor for life, because it is in the context of a temporary presence – the journey – that the need for community is expressed, for paying attention to the other that shapes our perspective and, as a result, that which we embrace as diverse from the actions of what is familiar (to us).

We head down the stairs towards the gallery’s basement. We slip into darkness. António Poppe’s light installation Rest in Paper works as a beacon in the middle of the night. Not as a lighthouse: no signs of the coast or the sea. Not like a lantern: the light trail is very precise, sharp, blade-like, and does not falter like people looking for a direction. Keeping with the metaphor of the journey, this is where the body stops, the blood keeps pumping. We are looking everywhere for the sense of smell that will finally make instinct a way of dulling the senses: to be at home. A spotlight hits a lying canvas supporting a triangular, tent-like structure – or the design of a house – with the same pattern: the reproduction of the manuscript of a Turkish talisman. This first house (but surely, figuratively, in this matriosca arrangement, the house is already the heir to the gallery itself, which from time to time welcomes us) is the miniature version of the installation. In the scale chasm that separates them, both pieces, like sisters of the same species, are positioned by the same light beam. Like the tip of a spear, the open manuscript is an invitation to read. At the edge of the blow, where the tension of the sight is dispelled in the junction and interpenetration of matter, there is a book, a text, a fabric to be unveiled. A misplaced language, the written word reduced (or enlarged?) to the condition of a body. Naturally, a body is not expected to be understood, but danced with: tactile, sonic, verbal choreography, etc. Rest in Paper blends two languages: Turkish and English. The linguistic estrangement between the play – which obviously contains writing – and the title is mainly visual. Most viewers will be fluent in English, which is less English than a lingua franca in this exhibition’s context – which already puts it in a specific time frame, elevating it to the status of an event -, the language that attempts to build a linguistic foundation that overcomes geographical and cultural distances. The same cannot be said of Turkish, spoken by only a small fraction of the exhibition’s visitors, if any at all. Consequently, if we have no knowledge of Turkish, the words in the title substantially take on the significance of the drawing, the meaning of which is both a suspicion and a temptation. The words of the title are equally taken on the importance of drawing because of the odd relationship they have with the writing images in the installation itself. All that remains is the honesty and love of an approximate, reciprocal, trustful and charming understanding.

A luminous house, a canvas lying down, the manuscript in lieu of a body that, in vigil, goes outside to look at the starry sky, in the middle of the desert (where, actually, one is always in the middle) or in a field from where one can spot a Hikmet train. This is a home, this temporary shelter – like the tongue – providing us with a temperature and a smell. As long as we want it, it binds imagination, skin and fantasy. It is a house and, for this reason, rather than obstructing our imaginations with cheap meta-artistic musings, so often disguised as lightness, António Poppe shows us the synthesis of the baroque ways in which the body is entangled, trying to write itself, extending its hands to someone who is passing by too quickly (life, our lover). The verb to rest implies respite: it could be a resting place or a pose, or the final, indescribable wake of death (rest in peace). In any event, this is a letter. On paper, that burning hot, corruptible screen recording any trace of impurity, which passionately harbors the signs of a passage. It is certainly a matter of learning about the dignity we should have in front of those who find us worthy of attention. The knots, the turns, the equations, the design, the foundations of a body which can only desire: it starts with educating our sight, knowing how to raise it, lying on top of our reach. Ultimately, to see the likely color of an ancient breath in the sand.

Espiral and Rest in Paper are on view until 20 March.

[1] The title of the text is a verse from The Book of Light, by António Poppe (ed. Documenta, 2014)