Everything, in fact, is the tip of a mystery.1
Bars and ruins anticipate the harsh atmosphere of a basement. Where once stood an old wine cellar, a dead-end corridor hides the traces of another time, the ambiguous sensations of a delirium go on maturing.
Based on a dialogue with the space of Belo Campo, Henrique Biatto’s installation drawing unfolds among the fissures and marks left on this raw, essential surface. Canil [Kennel], the artist’s first solo show in Lisbon, reflects hierarchies and structures that move across relationships through tools of control, a natural weaponry for defence and attack emerging from survival instinct.
There is always a side that is more fragile. Keeping to the escapes and traps of the depths of human nature, at the intersection of different matters, tensions between threshold and equilibrium rise to the surface. Deploying the action and reaction conducive to aspects of interspecies interaction, scathing signs reveal a...mirror of the I and the Other in the form and counter-form of the tiny things they return.
Found objects are transmuted, incorporating randomness into compositions that intertwine subtle instants. Reflections on time and wait are established. When nothing happens, there is a miracle we are not seeing.2 Of that which is not seen – or tends to remain concealed – the energy that precedes these instants, or the invisibility that guides the gestures, can be said.
Work tools and everyday tools dialogue with the ceramic to incorporate (along with the artisanal vs industrial dualism) the nuances of a continuous experimenting. In artistic making, like here, the cadence of time is other. By displaying the traces of the process, elements and trivialities point to the notion of inhabiting the practice.
In Canil, the spatial notion that acts upon Biatto’s work introduces itself into the works which, suggesting clues, integrate into the environment of Belo Campo. The activations they entail and the perceptions they instigate, generate a glimpse into the tenuous contrast between brutality and delicacy, akin to the cut produced by sharp fangs.
When the intercom rings, the dogs bark.
Ana Grebler
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1 “Tudo, aliás, é a ponta de um mistério” (ROSA, João Guimarães. O espelho In: Primeiras Estórias. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2001)
2 “Quando nada acontece, há um milagre que não estamos vendo”, ibid.
Entrada actualizada el el 14 feb de 2024
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