Uma Lâmpada No Porão

About

Participating artists:

Chico Machado, Flavya Mutran, ÍO, Leo Caobelli, Lizângela Torres, Manoela Furtado, Natalia Schul, Tuane Eggers, Walter Karwatzki

"The tableau as main medium for art works has been questioned by artists, since the 1920s. The reason for using expanded media for most artists is to communicate in a different way with the viewer of art. This also implies that the question is about the relation between the artist and the “others”, i.e. the spectator, the recipient, the society and thus about the political reality of the artist. Early on, photography played a leading role in what is concerned with extended means of art production. The term “Expanded Photography” thus makes much less sense than for example “expanded cinema”. For many artists, photography was the medium that allowed them to expand the classic fine arts. Furthermore, through the turn to digital media, photography has been challenged again and is under the scrutiny of being the means of social media experience.

We present art works that use photography as expansion or that challenge the term 'art photography'. The present exhibition takes place as the basement of the Paço dos Açorianos, with a unique atmosphere, which like the darkness of a wine cellar, also carries the shadow of its past, a prison for slaves. The works are illuminated by their own light.

Being the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, The Aleph is a tale that gives name to a book of Jorge Luiz Borges of years 1940. The concept of the exhibition creates a associative connection with the fiction of Borges, and to the luminous phenomenon of the transference of an image from one place to another one, which requires an environment of obscurity, as well as the imaginary consequences of this ancient physical experience of light. In the autobiographical tale, Borges lies in the dark of the basement, where he experiences a kind of trance. He describes the Aleph as a small glass sphere where fragments of all space would be present. From there, all the images would be projected and united. If all the places are in Aleph, there, in the basement, there would be all the lights. From the darkness, the possibility of enlightenment would arise." (Eisenlohr/ Vieira da Cunha)