Seléction du Portugal – Salon de la Jeune Création Européenne

Comissaire : Maria de Fátima Lambert

« Chemins qui ne mènent nulle part (…)

Chemins que l'on dirait avec art (…)
Chemins qui souvent n'ont
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Devant eux rien d'autre en face (…) »

Regarding the works chosen for the present exhibition I considered an idea deeply
rooted on late considerations upon words, images and art itself - maybe expressing a
sort of obsession of nowadays.
Concerning the domains Art, as in life itself, it seems that anything goes; maybe any
thought can become an accomplishment - an irreversible one with tragic subsequent
actions + reactions. Anything might become real but the very same concept or act
might also mean nothing at all. A certain “grade zero” versus horror vaccui of
perception, reception and interpretation is additionally offered for those who wish it!
So, it might or might no be; you chose the most self-convenient procedure; suit
yourself with the best outer images converted in inner images and their correspondent
concepts. It really has no profound meaning at all, in spite of the hush words enjoyed in
our accurate discussions; it’s pointless either you are supposed to act for or you just
avoid a commitment… why should it be either way?
Transporting these cloudy ideas, these paradoxes and challenging concepts into art
theory or aesthetics, let’s attend a few suitable points of view:
1. from the artist as an author
2. from the public as individual and/or collective identities
3. from the work or the concept as substance, as material.
And we could keep on going…running all the way through with time, as in Wim
Wenders’s tittle Im lauf der Zeit or in Fellini’s masterpiece E la nave va…
Well, not only each and every one of us has the right, as an individual, to deny or agree,
refuse or aim at something, but also as an author or a member of the “audience”, we
are allowed to act in an analogous way. The work of art does not necessarily
incorporate an obvious meaning; it might just translate the opposite of its
meaningfulness or simply be qualified for the lack of any sort of comprehension, sliding
away from any interpretation. That’s an entitlement (and a claim) from the spectator
domain - although he is not the primordial author, but the active user of the work or
concept, which finally interferes in his own life at different levels.
I’m not doing the apology of an aesthetics based purely on a randomising perception or
reception. I also don’t support the “unbearable lightness of being” versed in the art
kosmos… but in a sort of paradigmatic way: does not every work/product of art
emerges from a parallel world? Let’s not radicalise our cultural principles in order to
some sort on an insurance company incorporated for the survival of the aesthetic
experience!
Let’s follow these paths driving us nowhere, let us be – just for a while – der Wanderer
or le flâneur as we might choose to be. I’m almost sure that Baudelaire, Rilke Benjamin
or Fernando Pessoa are having a good laugh about it, thinking how lucid they have
been, not just at their time, but clairvoyant fellows, launched into the future.
Denial is such a dogmatic action, such a closed decision; disrespecting the freedom you
think have been dominated by our rational or sentimental will! Non-definition is such a
creative agony for some kind of authors, but it makes us feel good… as a spectator! Or,

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Rainer Marie Rilke, « Chemins qui ne mènent nulle part », Les Quatrain Valaisans.
in the opposite, nonchalance is voluptuous for the artist and an intense pain for the
audience…maybe…
Let’s reduce it to powerful quotations: either “have and not to have”, either “be or be
the less you have to be”…which can mean, oh maximum paradox, the whole world is
there just expecting you, me, and everyone who discovers it! Denial, refuse or non-
definition is supposed to achieve substantial and different outlines – as idea or
embodiment:
1. It’s the frame which contains the reflection of the world in a suitcase – a sort of
smart/discerning blind mirror which echoes barely inner/outer chosen scenes –
Rui Calçada Bastos;
2. the inaudible words - you only ear in your creative little head… the random
movements or words echoing in your eyes spelling “shadow” in honour or fear
of Caravaggio’s heritage – Beatriz Albuquerque;
3. the pictured departure but also the arrival at the bottom of the painting – Joana
Rego;
4. the numeric signals (+ or -) parted from their functional meaning and achieving
their physicality - Isaque;
5. the ancient cinemas once full of spectators and now thrown into broken
archaeological memories – Ana Pereira;
6. the baroque drawings of the contemporary persons, objects or landscapes
projected in lands of frightened utopias – Catarina Leitão;
7. conceptual, improbable and non-useful structures for a house to become a non-
home… - Nuno Sousa Vieira;
8. lost, lost and lost passages of the will, land of shadows and paradise (truly lost),
forgotten at the open air or indoors…- Nuno Cera;
9. the ultimate place of the soul to be, the appropriation of the claim for ideological
causes, where the corps are one – Inês Lousinha;
10. the place of time and the time zones allow us to conclude, to absolve, reason
and affections into a virtual world of illusional sublime that’s granted – Miguel
Soares.
So, let’s enjoy walking meaningless, let’s permit ourselves to have a journey without an
establish aim… just once…

Maria de Fátima Lambert

(Comissaire Portugal dans le Salon de Montrouge – Paris, 2006)