20 Sep 2012

Kunsthalle Lissabon presents Sancho Silva: Effigiae

Kunsthalle Lissabon presents Effigiae, Sancho Silva's most recent solo show and despite his already long career, the first time the artist shows individually in Lisbon. Departing from the dry skin of a common gecko, the rotating chitin shell of a bee and a suspended plaster model of a fish, Silva will create a staging of Lucretius's materialist theory of images through the use of shadows and projections.


'I affirm, then, that thin shapes and figures of objects are
detached from those objects; from the surface, I mean, of
their bodies; shapes which are to be designated, as it were,
their pellicle or bark, because each image bears the likeness
and form of that object, whatsoever it be, from whose surface
it is detached and seems to wander through the air.

This fact any one, with however dull an intellect, may understand
from what follows. In the first place, since many
bodes, among objects manifest before our eyes, send off, when
disunited, various particles from their substance, partly diffused
and subtle, as wood discharges smoke and fire heat, and partly
more close and condensed, as whenever grasshoppers in summer
lay aside their thin coats, and when calves, at their birth,
cast the membrane from the surface of their bodies, and, likewise,
when the slippery snake puts off his garment among the
thorns, (for we frequently see the briers gifted with their
spoils): since these things, I say, take place, a thin image may
naturally be detached from bodies; that is to say, from the
extreme surface of bodies. For why those subatances which
are more dense, should more readily fall away and recede from
bodies, than those shapes which are light and subtle, it is
quite impossible to tell; especially when there are numberless
minute particles on the surface of objects, which may be
thrown off in the order in which they have lain, and keep the
outline of their figure; and this so much the more easily, as,
being comparatively few, and placed on the outmost superficies,
they are less liable to be obstructed.

(...)

But lest perchance you should think, that those images of
objects alone wander abroad, which fly off from the objects
themselves, there are others, also, which are produced spontaneously,
and are combined of themselves in this sky which
is called the air; those images, namely, which, fashioned in
various shapes, are borne along on high, and, being soft in
their contexture, never cease to change their figure, and to
metamorphose themselves into the outlines of forms of every
sort. This we sometimes see the clouds do, when we observe
them thicken on high, and dim the serene race of the firmament,
yet soothing the air, as it were, with their motion; I as,
frequently, the faces of giants seem to fly over the heaven,
and to spread their shadows far and wide; sometimes huge
mountains, and rocks apparently torn from those mountains,
seem now to go before the sun, now to follow close behind
him; then some monster seems to drag forward, and to obtrude,
other stormy clouds'


Titus Lucretius Carus, On The Nature Of Things, book 4
(transl. Rev. John Selby Watson)


Sancho Silva was born in Lisbon in 1973. He holds a sculpture diploma from Ar.Co, the School of Arts and Visual Communication in Lisbon, an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and has attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. A selection of his solo shows include Objects (Pinksummer, Genoa, 2009), Dolle Mol (Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp, 2008), Cyclopean Eye: Cairo (Pinksummer, Genoa, 2007), Cyclopean Eye: Berlin (Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlim, 2006), Orange Works, in collaboration with John Hawke (Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, 2005), Modulators (Steuben West Gallery, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, 2004), Sub-urb (Serralves Park, Porto, 2003), Shortcut (Inkijk, SKOR, Amesterdam, 2002). His work was featured in several group exhibitions, namely Slow Movement or: Half and Whole (Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, 2009), El Medio es el Museo (MARCO, Vigo, 2008), Love at First Site (Futura Projects, Prague, 2008), Shelter (Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, 2008), Portugal Agora (Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxemburg, 2007), Où? Scènes du Sud : Espagne, Italie, Portugal (Carré d'Art - Musée d'Art Contemporain de Nîmes, Nîmes, France, 2007), Prémio União Latina (Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal, 2007), Sete Artistas ao Décimo Mês (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2003) and Manifesta4, (Frankensteinerhof, Frankfurt, 2002).


Kunsthalle Lissabon and the exhibition Effigiae are generously supported by Teixeira de Freitas, Rodrigues e Associados.