Smoke room
Museu Guerra Junqueiro, porto 2023
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© Photo credits: Joana Patrão e Tiago Madaleno
Smoke clouds (2023),
Exhibition view: set of postcards - graphite, pen (blue and red) and marker (blue and red) on Fabriano paper 200gr - installed in transparent acrylic with variable dimensions.
Smoke Room continues to build a fictional universe based on stories from the German artist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), as had already happened in A Garden at Night (2020), Rampa, Porto, and in A leaf in the pocket (2022), Porto Penitentiary Institution (Custóias). This time, the project focuses on a series of episodes associated with his period of exile during the Second World War: first in Norway, where he painted landscapes that he sold to tourists, then in England, at Hutchinson Camp (Isle of Man), where he took refuge in the memory of these lost Norwegian landscapes.
Like a double of the mural A leaf in the pocket, the exhibition once again invokes a desire for escapism, for a search for refuge, but this time it finds in encrypted language, in gestures of concealment and code, the tools for the pursuit of an idealized Norway.
Through postcards, image and text, this exhibition revisits and metamorphosizes these lost places captured by Kurt Schwitters' paintings, staging correspondence that was never sent, building graphic and writing games with the format's conventions. By recontextualizing fragments of stories and confidences, it paradoxically reveals their attempt to hide from their exposure in a public space.
Smoke Room comes after an invitation from Museu do Porto, to develop a site-specific project for its Gabinete do Desenho, located in the Museu Guerra Junqueiro.
Exhibition flyer: pdf
Exhibition Review by Sandra Silva, published at Arte Capital (April, 2023) (portuguese only)
© Photo credits: Joana Patrão e Tiago Madaleno
Shhhhhhh (2023),
Set of galvanized steel sheets with a laser-cut design and metallic blue spray paint with a synthetic base.
14,8 x 10,3 cm each.
© Photo credits: Joana Patrão e Tiago Madaleno
Red shoes (echoes) (2023),
100w Lamp, red stained glass paint, with Arduino programming.
Using the signals sended by the Arduino, the lightbulb blinks according to the rhythm of the tap dancing first presented in A Garden at Night (2020), Rampa, Porto.
Silence (2022-2023),
Set of 16 postcards: graphite, pen (blue and red) and marker (blue and red) on Fabriano paper 200 gr.
14,8 x 10,3 cm each; 60 x 41,2 cm total
Shhhhhhh (2023),
Set of galvanized steel sheets with a laser-cut design and metallic blue spray paint with a synthetic base.
14,8 x 10,3 cm each.
© Photo credits: Joana Patrão e Tiago Madaleno
Smoke clouds (2023),
Exhibition view: set of postcards - graphite, pen (blue and red) and marker (blue and red) on Fabriano paper 200gr - installed in transparent acrylic with variable dimensions.
