Under The Skin
Photography
VOYEUR PROJECT VIEW
VALTER VINAGRE
www.valtervinagre.com
08.11.07/09.12.07
Open 24 hours a day
Monday to Saturday by appoitment
#2.1 | Under the Skin
Valter Vinagre’s work is simultaneously the work of an archivist, philosopher, architect and creator of powerful images that capture human beings and their anthropological and sociological environments as the beginning and end of a study that follows a certain tradition that is greatly inspired by Foucault. His work is rooted in a methodological archaeology that analyses the social, economic and political behaviour of human beings and their environments, rituals and innermost aspects. This is an endeavour that seeks to create stories out of moments, a meticulous task of showing how these images emerge and a reflection of the ambiguities of their joys and frailties. His photographs encapsulate a force of nature, there is always something far deeper than the image that can be seen. A primeval force emanating from an individual who probes the souls of landscapes, people, bodies (or the body in this case) and reveals and feels them with an ontological sensitivity and invisibility. There is an existential force in his work that is characteristic of someone who lives his experiences to the core of his being and leaves no room for manoeuvre for easy fiction or artificiality, things are revealed to us by means of a profound process that is deeply felt and is as genuine as it is aesthetic. This is an artist who has an exceptional capacity to construct images and who also manages to demonstrate a method that entails and begins with understanding and assimilating the tradition of photo-journalism (with superb maturity), subsequently associating it with the best elements of poetic and documental contemporary art, in a methodology that, in a certain way, is a legacy of a political and realist art that always seeks fulfilment. His images stir us in a quest for an almost cinematographic canon that can be associated with a Rossellini, albeit combined with a strongly plastic and contemporary approach.
Thus, this work, "Under One’s Skin, 1996 - 2007", is a profoundly intimate exercise. By using images that were initially realised in Polaroid and were then subsequently transferred to another material support (inkjet printouts), Valter Vinagre has managed to accentuate these limits of the plasticity of images by enlarging the original format. This is a singular moment that, while not entirely unusual in terms of this artist’s body of work, is a cartographical exploration of the body with a plastic intensity that is closer to an almost abstract painting. Valter Vinagre uses photography as an artistic medium and tries to achieve plastic extremes via this medium. This series has an exceptional strength and capacity to demonstrate the artist’s mastery of sensuality and a passion for experimentation (in terms of colour, where the use of Polaroid images contributed greatly), which stirs the beholder with its almost abstract characteristics. This is thus a series of photographs that reveal an extremely powerful moment reflecting masterful plastic abilities and an intensity that approaches the force of paintings of carnal intimacy.
These photographs follow the profound guiding thread in all of Valter Vinagre’s oeuvre, an artist who is on a quest to chart intrinsic human ritual(s) and gesture(s) and their bodies/ shells, both as individuals and as part of a community. Thus, we can compare this series of photographs to carnal sonnets rather than erotic ones, in which the skin is revealed (and not revealed) with a metaphysical lyricism, the skin of a body that exists and doesn’t exist, which can be seen and which cannot be seen. A singular and intense poem in a work made of philosophical and poetic documentaries and romances.
The body is thus revealed as a landscape that has to be rediscovered. Like a musical exercise by Bach. These images and, in terms of its visual ontological energy, the body (feminine, sensual and carnal) all appear as a new, intense and powerful cartography to be discovered and carefully reappraised with regard to the multiple variations on this timeless theme – the female body. These images are not flights of fancy, but rather are powerful sketches, reminiscent of expressionist, fragmentary paintings of a body that moves us with its sensuality. However, it is also a body to be discovered with the passion of an individual who loves intensely and creates art without half measures, an art that seeks total fulfilment. When confronted with the chromatic intensity and chromatic beauty/ violence of these images, there is only one course available to us: to let ourselves be swept away and, above all, to be genuine in everything that we feel.
Dinis Guarda
London May 2007
Artist Book - Under The Skin
With this exhibition Valter Vinagre creates an artist book of 50 numbered and signed copies.
The book is made of an inox box (12x10x1cm) with ten original prints inside, printed in inkjet with the size of Polaroids SX70 and with a text by Dinis Guarda, editor-in-chief of 'Número Arte e Cultura'.
The book may be bought by the cover price of 50 euros with 5% iva over it.
Voyeur Project View
www.voyeurprojectview.org
Morada:
Rua de Timor, 14 - A
1170 - 372 LISBON
Portugal
Transportes:
Metro: Anjos
Autocarro: 12, 26, 30
Eléctrico: 28
Telefone:
961825575
Projecto: Rodrigo Vilhena
voyeurprojectview@gmail.com
Support | Under The Skin
#2.2 | PROJECT On the Road. Remembering Kerouac.
With participation of Martim Ramos photographyhttp://rememberingjackkerouac.blogspot.com/
photo by Martim Ramos/Kameraphoto
09.11.07/01.12.07
Avenida da Liberdade, n.º 211, 2º Andar, em Lisbon. (EXPOSIÇÃO)
Schedule from wednesday to friday, 17h ro 20h, Saturday from 15h to 20h
Concept: Last 5th of September marks the 50th aniversary of the publication of 'On the Road', the most celebrated book by Jack
Kerouac. The event gathered 13 portuguese artists that have presented a collective exhibition. The artists proposals run through various areas from drawing to photography, from video to sound, with each artist proposing a certain interpretation on the book, Kerouac's universe and that of all the beat generation, leaving a wide open space to all the interpretations and other creations.
Activities on the side - Cinema festival at Cinemateca: "Road Movie", from 5th until 30th of November Readings of beat generation texts at the exhibition place Finishing concert with Tó Trips (Dead Combo, ex-Lulu Blind), 1st of December.
PARTICIPANTS ARTISTS
André Almeida e Sousa
Bruno Sequeira
Eduardo Salavisa
João Grama
João Paulo Serafim
José António Leite
José Pedro Cortes
Manuel Duarte
Margarida Gouveia
Mariana Viegas
Martim Dias Ramos / kameraphoto
Paulo Brighenti
Paulo Pascoal
#2.3 | Outras Zonas de Contacto
Contemporary Images of a private photography collectionwith António Júlio Duarte in the collection/exhibition, at Museu da Cidade, Lisbon
............
© António Júlio Duarte/Kameraphoto© Nan Goldin
06.11.07/06.01.08
.Campo Grande, 245, Lisbon.
Schedule, Tuesday to Sunday from 10h-13h to 14-18h | Saturday is closed
Access transports: Bus: 1, 3, 7, 33, 36, 47, 50, 68, 85, 101, 108 | Metro Station: Campo Grande
As an extent to its cycle "Works from Private and Public Collections", the Foundation Carmona e Costa and the City Museum present for the first time to the general public the photographic collection of Américo Marques dos Santos. It gathers more than a hundred works from 31 international and national authors, essential to the understanding of the contemporary photographic production. The exhibition takes place in two locations that match complementary views.
Collection/Exhibition
The photographic collection of Américo Marques dos Santos was built up over the last five years under guidance of the artist Pires Vieira, favouring the contemporary renewal of the portrait as a photographic gender and the decisive influences from other creative universes (such as painting, cinema and advertising) in the approach to reality. A special attention was also devoted to the different architectures that set the post-modern scenery. The collection has grown based on authorship nucleuses that allow the sight of a multiplicity of practices and problematics that shape the path of each artist, providing simultaneously a widespread view of the photographic domain within the international contemporary art circuit. Conceived as a presentation jointed in to institutions that propose an exhibitional journey inside the city - Foundation Carmona e Costa (Espaço Arte Contemporânea) and the CIty Museum (Pavilhão Preto) - this display is aiming at revealing the diversity of trends that characterizes the collection of Américo Marques dos Santos, showing the different artistic standings, work processes and critical reflections underlying the body of images under focus. A bilingual catalogue (pt/eng) shall be published as a partnership with Assírio &Alvim.
Lisbon Art - 2007 / Art Fair
Taking place on the side of the 2007 edition of Lisbon Art Fair, the showing will be part of the respective Collectors Program, allowing another sort of readings and learnings around the practice of collecting in the specific domain of photography.
The exhibition gathers works by ANDREAS GURSKY, ANDRES SERRANO, ANTÓNIO JÚLIO DUARTE, ARNULF RAINER, AUGUSTO ALVES DA SILVA, AXEL HÜTTE, BERND & HILLA BECHER, CANDIDA HÖFER, CINDY SHERMAN, GÜNTHER FÖRG, HELENA ALMEIDA, HELMUT NEWTON, JOAN FONTCUBERTA, JOÃO TABARRA, JOÃO PENALVA, JORGE MOLDER, JOSÉ LUÍS NETO, JÚLIA VENTURA, MARTIN PARR, NAN GOLDIN, NOBUYOSHI ARAKI, OLAFUR ELIASSON, PAUL GRAHAM, PHILIP-LORCA DI CORCIA, RICHARD PRINCE, RINEKE DIJKSTRA, SAM TAYLOR-WOOD, THOMAS STRUTH, THOMAS RUFF, VANESSA BEECROFT, WILLIAM WEGMAN, WOLFGANG TILLMANS.
#2.4 | Paulina Valente Pimentel | International Photography Festival in Portugal (IPFP).
The first edition of th IPFP has ended last 10th of November in
Estremoz. This event was organized and promoted by APPAF and had the support of Estremoz Mayor. Pauliana Valente Pimentel had an exhibition among the 15 that took place. Her work consisted of 10 random pictures of women took in several locations and situations of both a religious and demoniacal context. For more informations on this and other works
please contact by email: desk@kameraphoto.com.
The photographs are available to buy in Chiado, Gallery 3+1 Contemporary Art , Lisbon.
Click here to see the photographies gallery.
photo by Pauliana Valente Pimentel/Kameraphoto
Apoios | Sob a Pele
#2.5 | "Lost Functions", exhibition by nelson d'aires
As part of the Festa Redonda Festival (Azores), the exhibition "Lost Functions" by Nelson d'Aires will be opened until 20th of December at Ilha do Corvo.
The exhibition will proceed on 27th of December to Ilha das Flores and then to all the other islands until April 2009, as in the predicted schedule.
The photographs will be available for sale at the exhibition place. If you which to contact the photographer please send an email.
Click here to see the photographies gallery.
photo by nelson d'aires/Kameraphoto