Snow White, 2006, 193x168cm

Orange, 2006, 183x173 cm

4 PAINTINGS (IN A SQUARE ROOM), CULTURGEST, 2007

Notes for a guided tour \ Culturgest

1 – My work is based on the use of different language fields in contemporary culture, as it happens with the free internet user, and  a frantic use of overlapping spaces.

This flatness is a virtual one, where image directs us toward differences, weaving through openness of meanings, or random directions.

In this culture, amid different speeds and intensities, I explore that vernacular effect, a social ritual of simulated production.

2 – Daily, images appear and disappear, while I write. Their origins vary: abstractions, quotations and appropriations. I have a bank of images that I keep enlarging.

The work of other artists is very important -- it accelerates links and connections.

3 – The links are important because I’m interested in things that collapse occasionally – looking for improbable relations. 

I don’t look for similarities between items I produce – rather an experimental functioning, as editing in parallel timelines. 

There isn’t a steady formal repetition, although there are categories that tend to repeat themselves, and therefore there's a questioning of what repetition is – I see each painting as if I was making variants to one single image. (There is no repetition at all...!)

4 – Snow White, 2006: an image created by Walt Disney in a wonder-world that turned out absolutely non immaculate. Snow White can be an element of chaos. Looked at a surfer by Peter Doig while painting SW.

Classical Portrait (Smoking), 2006: the white color is the canvas, under-painted, and simultaneously the cigarette smoke that the replicant in Blade Runner is languidly smoking. The image is from an apocalyptic and nostalgic future. Looked at a painting by Rene Daniels that reminded me of fauvism.

Ruin, 2006: an image that turned abstract – a torn apart warehouse next to the river, in Lisbon. The need to trace lines and invent structures.

Orange, 2006: I wanted to make a Rothko. A Rothko is a landscape – an atmospheric square. That is where the green line comes from - the space in the middle. One more abstract painting.

5 – The visible is not simply what there is, but refers to the observer who oscillates among many levels and wherever he wants to wander; he is placed in a situation. 

In this global and disperse culture, systems are created by selecting from this information.

Meaning always refers to a specific GPS coordinate. Metaphysical and political.  

(Brooklyn 20 / 04 / 07)