As quatro pinturas que compõem este projecto basearam-se em objectos encontrados e recolhidos no antigo Instituto de Reabilitação Social para Raparigas, uma instituição de correcção entretanto desactivada do Ministério da Justiça. Pintar estes objectos foi um modo de lidar com a função e a forma do espaço. São pinturas parasitárias que mantêm uma dependência lógica e contextual do lugar que momentaneamente lhes serviu de hospedeiro.
As pinturas foram colocadas fora de qualquer exposição calendarizada, e sem qualquer anúncio.
The four paintings comprising this project were based on found objects recovered in the Ministry of Justice’ old Institute for Social Rehabilitation of Young Girls, in Vila Nova de Gaia. The paintings were a way of dealing with the function and shape of its space. These are parasitic paintings that maintain a logic and contextual dependency on the place that momentarily served them as host.
The paintings were hanged outside any scheduled exhibition, and without any announcement.
Love & Care, 2005. Óleo sobre tela / Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm.
Pintura colocada numa sala de aula, Instituto de Reabilitação para Raparigas, V. Nova de Gaia, 2005
Painting displayed in a classroom, at the old Institute for Social Rehabilitation of Young Girls, Vila Nova de Gaia.
Love & Care is a small painting displayed in the corner of one of the classrooms of the Institute. Placed at the waist level, it is not visible from the small window connected to a contiguous office, used to control the room. The picture represents a pair of latex gloves found in the same place before it was cleaned. There is an ambivalent nature in these objects, usually associated with care and maintenance, both of bodies as of spaces.
In that room, the latex gloves seemed to have the character of a proof, a trace of an action, more than mere leftovers. Painting it was the only thing that occurred to me to preserve its importance before being discarded.
The Cloud, 2005. Óleo sobre tela / Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm.
Pintura colocada numa sala de aula, Instituto de Reabilitação para Raparigas, V. Nova de Gaia, 2005
Painting displayed in a classroom, at the old Institute for Social Rehabilitation of Young Girls, Vila Nova de Gaia.
The Cloud is sister painting of Love & Care. It represents another object found at the Institute for Social Rehabilitation of Young Girls. Unlike the background, made by scraping and sprinkling processes, the object was painted with makeup brushes, the softest I’ve found. The painting was displayed on the wall of another classroom at the Institute, just next to an opening with exactly the same size, used to monitor, without being seen, the class’ behavior.
Untitled, 2005. Óleo sobre tela / Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm.
Pintura colocada em dormitório, Instituto de Reabilitação para Raparigas, V. Nova de Gaia, 2005
Painting displayed in a dorm room, at the old Institute for Social Rehabilitation of Young Girls, Vila Nova de Gaia.
Untitled represents a person’s face performing a gesture of silence, staring us directly. The image that triggered it was the memory of a poster, which was very common in Portuguese state buildings such as schools and hospitals, a few decades ago: a young girl, represented in three quarters, of Nordic appearance, dressed in a school uniform over a red background, performing the same gesture of silence reproduced in the painting, and as a footnote the onomatopoeic expression schhhhhh!. It was an image of authority, indifferent to the childlike aspect of the figure. The painting intended to retain the performative function of order in this seminal image. In a certain sense, it is a directive act, an instruction and an attempt to get someone to do something, adjusting the world to what the image represents. The portrait was reconstituted using police robot-portrait software. Its contours were transposed as small segments, each with a distinct color, like someone would do if they were embroidering. This game of meaningful oppositions between an image of authority and a decorative image was the perverse element that interested me the most.
Could this have been made with other means rather than painting? Of course it could. But painting, culturally, implies a contemplative reaction I cared to explore as a form of authority that imposes itself by a seduction of seeing, not by coercive processes or arbitrary codes. Like the rest of the building, the window, next to which the painting was displayed, has a particular quality: it allows the sun light to get in, but blocks the view to the outside. Painting has thus become the only existing object in the dorm room to where one could look at, from dawn to nightfall. Seeing, in this space, is a performative act.
IT, 2005. Óleo sobre tela / Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm.
Pintura pendurada em dormitório, Instituto de Reabilitação para Raparigas, V. Nova de Gaia, 2005
Painting displayed in a dorm room, at the old Institute for Social Rehabilitation of Young Girls, Vila Nova de Gaia.
An abandoned mannequin in a dorm room with an ambivalent face, in between gender, expression and race. Most probably was used as prompt in the sewing classrooms. But in the dorm room it stood like a vague representation, an homogeneous and imprecise mass acquiring its meaning by the place it occupies among other objects, as the form of a tragic function.
THE BLIND CABINET 