04 Aug 2010

Mattia Denisse and Eduardo Matos at Zé dos Bois Gallery, Lisboa

O CONTRA-CÉU Ensaio sobre o Hiato (THE COUNTER-HEAVEN Essay on the hiatus) by Mattia Denisse

O CONTRA-CÉU Ensaio sobre o Hiato (THE COUNTER-HEAVEN Essay on the hiatus), is an installation assembled specifically for Galeria Zé dos Bois. It presents a number of drawings, sculptures, objects and a new 16mm film. Inspired by the parallel reading of two texts: the first is a dialogue by Giordano Bruno that deals with the classic objection of the finiteness of the universe: (...) what would happen if someone, with his hand, speared the heavens? Burchio, one of the dialogue's characters, replies: (...) 'if a person would stretch out his hand beyond the convex (concave) sphere of heaven, the hand would occupy no position in space, nor any place, and in consequence would not exist; the other is a poem from the book 'Le Contre-Ciel' by René Daumal, called 'Disillusion' that explores the absolute limit and the fleeting moment that separates life from death. The present essay deals with concept of hiatus, which is the conjunction of these two parallel lines.

THE COUNTER-HEAVEN Essay on the hiatus Mattia Denisse | Curator Natxo Checa | Curatorial Assistent Paulo Queiroz | Production Assistent Miguel Ferrão | Graphic Design Sílvia Prudêncio | Press Daniela Ribeiro | Education Services Inês Castaño | Technical Support Cristiano Nunes, Bruno Moreira | Assembling Valerii Ceban | Maintenance Maria Emília Pereira.

+ info_www.mattiadenisse.masasam.com


O CAÇADOR DE BORBOLETAS (THE BUTTERFLY HUNTER) by Eduardo Matos

'Whenever I travelled through the highway from Oporto to Lisbon, I would always notice a small landscape detail from the right window of my car. It's a kind of throat, just before entering Lisbon. If you're driving at 120 km/h, you can see it for about 21 seconds. When the Sun is at a certain height, a huge shadow takes hold of that place, just before dusk. It's as if the night got there first.'

The focal point of this work is a place. Everything in this place is organized by it's own inner logic, particularly what concerns the relationship between people, animals and natural environment. The valley is the result of these temporal criterias. Fernand Braudel defined them as the biological time of the individual, the social time of human culture, their mental structures, beliefs, habits and customs.
My project concerns this infrastructure of the 'place', the interior and exterior relations that it generates, the mental projection of the time - given by the history of these places - the ever-changing sight of the landscape and the silence that it conveys.
Eduardo Matos

O CAÇADOR DE BORBOLETAS (THE BUTTERFLY HUNTER) Eduardo Matos | Curadoria Natxo Checa | Curatorial Assistent Paulo Queiroz | Production Assistent Miguel Ferrão | Graphic Design Sílvia Prudêncio | Press Daniela Ribeiro | Education Services Inês Castaño | Technical Support/ Sound/ Lights Cristiano Nunes, Bruno Moreira | Assembling Valerii Ceban | Maintenance Maria Emília Pereira.


A ZDB production with funding by Direcção-Geral das Artes/ Ministério da Cultura

From the 21st of July to 18th of September 2010 at Galeria Zé dos Bois
Open Wednesdays to Saturdays, from 6 pm 11pm