The meeting point was at Estação do Oriente, with the group waiting under banana leaves, in Calatrava’s illustration of the bus station’s canopies. The bus departed for Lisbon – Vidigueira at a little after half past nine. The reason: a conversation between Pedro Canoilas and the artists Fernão Cruz, Gonçalo Barreiros, José Pedro Croft, Luís Rocha and Sara Mealha, on the exhibition Through the Eyes of the Makers.

The morning had awakened shrouded in mist, but the sky soon opened up to the south, unveiling the bright Alentejo sun. A narrow street near Cuba provided a glimpse of the difference in scale between the city bus and the humble whitewashed houses. However, the town of Vila de Frades, at the foothills of Quinta do Quetzal, was the place where the bus we were travelling in became a popular tourist attraction. A slow-moving sequence of manoeuvres, mixed with a U-turn and silent gestures through the windows, in and out, kept the locals amused that Sunday. It was nothing more than a performance, as the crew were mostly a group of young emerging artists. We eventually arrived at our destination around midday.

On the subject of Quinta do Quetzal, the estate is not only a wine production centre, but also a contemporary art space. Aveline de Bruin^[1] has been trying to promote the Bruin-Heijn collection in the heart of the Alentejo since 2016, right in the enclave between Beja and Évora. Plenty of ceiling height divides an open floor over the vineyard landscape from the semi-underground gallery space. Around 400 m2 of open plan space will host Through the eyes of the makers until 30 March, an exhibition curated by Pedro Canoilas in dialogue with Aveline de Brun’s space.

The title, which refers to the assembly crew, provides an intimate and emotional perspective on the works and their relationship with the artists, whom Canoilas follows in assemblies and whom he knows well, as well as the space he has often reshaped. Curation therefore does not start from a narrative, a theme or a half-rigid idea, but rather is a fluid construction process, almost like an assembly line, where the pieces fit together and dialogue with each other, much like Pedro Canoilas with the artists – as the artists pointed out in the conversation that followed the free tour and the drink.

Moving on to the content of the exhibition, José Pedro Croft’s piece (Untitled, 1998) stands out at the entrance to the exhibition centre. It touches on anamorphism, posing a challenge to measurable (dimensional) perception: of edges, surfaces or perimeters. In one of the opposite corners of the room, Carlos Nogueira reminds us of the fluidity of a river that runs right through the house. Three-dimensional charcoal drawings of water courses and the shape of the fire warming a house (Desenho de rio 1980/2022 and Desenho de casa aberta para cima, 2010/2017). A river flow, which no longer comes through or travels down, but is nourished by a yellow hose, a piece by Gonçalo Barreiros (Untitled, 2018). Fernão Cruz’s installation in the centre of the gallery, raised like a conceptual prison, swings between the innocence of birth and the fragility of a fainting spell – the slumber of a father. Reenactment of a father (2022-2024) is a threshold between reality and Cruz’s imagination. Outside the door, a pile of carrots baits rabbits for food. We go down the rabbit hole, running the risk of falling into the trap; lucky for us, the bait is also a floor knocker, but there are no draughts.

Canoilas also added humour and irony, which is present in several dialogues between the plays. This is also evident in João Pedro Vale and Nuno Alexandre Ferreira’s Palhaço Rico Fode Palhaço Pobre (2017), Martîm and his Paraísos Urbanos II and III (2022-2023) and the duo Jonh Wood and Paul Harrison’s Semi Automatic Painting Machine (2014). The latter is a 19-minute and 36-second film exploring the CMYK universe inside a painting greenhouse, where light is artificial (perhaps like colour). An entertaining and minimalist satire on contemporary society caught in the creative and repetitive loop of a daily routine – a ‘film’ that probably Jacques Tati would have liked to have made. Sara Mealha also provided a colourful backdrop to the conversation. Fresh (2024) is a horizontal canvas, freshly painted (or a fresco?), subverting the logic between whoever is who in this jumble of meanings: the editor, the curator, the artist and the painter.

We cannot round off this article without the visual slowdown provided by Luís Rocha’s black box – a two-channel video installation on a nuanced wall painting. The screening is a metro or train journey, or even by car (it’s quick), with stops or references (allow me to be bold) to Kazimir Malevich and Mark Rothko^[2]. Tadao Ando’s Church of Light also fits in there, or closer to home, this projection on Álvaro Siza’s Chapel of the Mount, on pigmented lime. All analogies and references aside, Untitled (2024), by Luís Rocha, is undoubtedly one of the highlights.

In keeping with the religious theme, we ended the day by climbing the hill, the one we could see from the panoramic terrace. Perched on the hilltop, nestled between winter-sleeping vineyards, three pine trees and three speakers echo a sweet-sweet timbre. Scottish artist Susan Philipsz’s three-channel sound installation Tomorrow’s Sky (2019), summoned the ‘bird of paradise’, ending the day and silencing the crowds on their way back to Lisbon.

Through the Eyes of the Makers features works by Carla Cabanas, Catarina Dias, Carlos Nogueira, Carlos Noronha Feio, Daniel Mattar, Elizabeth Prentis, Fernão Cruz, Fábio Colaço, Gonçalo Barreiros, Inês Zenha, João Cutileiro, João Pedro Vale + Nuno Alexandre Ferreira, José Pedro Croft, Luís Rocha, Margarida Bolsa, Margarida Lagarto, Martîm, Sara Mealha, Sofia Castro and Wood and Harrisson, as well as a collection of multiples from Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa. The exhibition is open until March 30.

^[1] Aveline de Bruin, daughter of collectors Cees and Inge de Bruin-Heijn, has been responsible for the Bruin-Heijn Collection, an international gathering of contemporary art based in the Netherlands, since 2008.

^[2] We are also drawn to the famous ‘stargate’ sequence from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: Space Odyssey’ – recently revisited (honoured) by Coralie Fargeat in ‘The Substance’.