The summer was just like a house to live in where
everything is …
From the 18th of May to the 17th of July 2016
Opening the 18th of May at 6 pm
Curatorship: Paula Rego and Catarina Alfaro
Twenty-six oils on canvas carried out between 1975 and
2008
A selection by Paula Rego
"All these paintings possess a
threatening simplicity," stated Paula Rego when she was choosing
the works to exhibit. There is no doubt that Manuel Amado's work is
constructed starting from a mystery that, at the outset, is simple:
normal things are seen from a different angle, and thus the modes
of conception of subjectivity in the apprehending of the world may
become the true source of the enigma. Each of these paintings is
thus an exercise in perceiving the invisible in the visible aspects
of the work. His painting does not restore the visible, but makes
it visible. In painting, as Klee paradigmatically stated, it is not
a matter of reproducing or inventing forms, but is always an
exercise of capturing forces. That is why no art is figurative, as
the task of painting is defined as an attempt to grant visibility
to the forces that are not visible: "Fighting the shadow is the
only real fight. When the visual sensation faces the invisible
force that conditions it, it releases a force that can overcome it,
or at least make an ally of it".
O encontro, furtivo ou explícito, com as histórias
e as imagens que as contam nunca se traduz, na obra de Paula Rego,
numa tentativa de ilustrar a pintura antiga, a palavra, o romance,
ou a persistência das imagens cinematográficas ou teatrais que se
alinharam como as suas influências marcantes.
Ao compilar fragmentos de pinturas, caçados aqui e
ali, Paula Rego arranca da sua memória histórias e imagens que
estão associadas às suas impressões visuais mais profundas,
auxiliada por novos - mas temporalmente longínquos - estímulos
visuais que actualizam essa memória. É precisamente do confronto
com as imagens do passado e a sua actualização na
experiência/memória visual e narrativa da artista que surge o corpo
de obras concebidas durante e após esta experiência com a colecção
da National Gallery.
A Caçadora Furtiva, na Casa das Histórias Paula
Rego, mostra, com particular destaque, uma série de trabalhos da
artista que resultam precisamente deste encontro com as colecções
de museus ou os que são criados na sequência de um convite para
exposição nesse contexto museológico, sem que haja necessariamente
uma relação com as colecções.
É nesta condição de caçadora furtiva que persegue a
sua presa e se recolhe, para depois se fundir com ela, que devemos
olhar para as obras presentes nesta exposição.
The invisible forces present in Manuel
Amado's painting are firstly the affective connections to the
spaces in which he has lived, and which are revealed through a
memory which is not photographic, but which is reconfigured and
contains resonances that come from the past and from the present,
from the moment in which these spaces are being recalled by the
artist through the painting. But can life, time and his memories be
made visible? In his work À la recherche du temps perdu, Marcel
Proust alluded to involuntary memory, distinguishing it from the
voluntary memory that illustrates or narrates the past. Involuntary
memory, which according to Proust contains the essence of the past,
functions in a completely different manner, bringing together two
sensations that existed on different levels of the body and which
successively apprehend the sensation of the present and that of the
past, thus giving rise to something that could not be reduced to
either of them. This is how these spaces created by Manuel Amado
are structured, from zones of confrontation, of divided sensations,
that are re-fitted to each other, just as Paula Rego noted: "It is
as if he painted in order to eradicate a ghost, something he will
never be able to do."