Paris Photo 2014 | Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea by Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea

PARIS PHOTO | Nov 13 - 16 2014 Grand Palais, Paris, France

DANIEL BLAUFUKS Daniel Blaufuks (Lisbon, 1963) Solo shows (selection) Utz, (Vera Cortes, Lisboa, 2012), Works on Memory, (curated by David Drake and Filipa Oliveira, Ffotogallery, Cardiff, 2012), Três quartos de memória (Fundação Eva Klabin, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 2011), Hoje é sempre ontem (curated by Luiz Camillo Osório, MAM, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2011), Perecs Büro (curated by Sérgio Mah, Kunstverein Ruhr, Essen, Germany, 2010), A memória da memória, (Carpe Diem, Lisboa, 2010), O ofício de viver, Galeria Carlos Carvalho, Lisboa, 2010, Viagens com a minha tia / Travels with my Aunt, Solar - Galeria de Arte Cinemática, Vila do Conde, 2009 Album (Centro Cultural Vila Flor. Guimarães, Portugal, 2008), O Arquivo, Agencia Vera Cortes, Lisboa, 2008 Terezin, Galeria Manoel Macedo, Belo Horizonte, 2007, Blaufuks, Galeria La Caja Negra, Madrid, 2007, Cinema Motel, (Elga Wimmer PCC, New York City, 2006), No Próximo Sábado, (Gallery Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon, 2006), A Perfect Day, (Museu do Chiado, Lisbon, 2005), Collected Short Stories, (Centro de Arte Moderna, Fund. Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2003), Exile, Image Galery, Aarhus, 2001, Lisboa, Pessoa, Exílio, Saramago, Galeria Luís Serpa, Lisboa, 2001, Fotografias Recentes, Galeria Maria Martin, Madrid, 2000, andorra, Galeria André Viana, Porto, 2000, Uma viagem a São Petersburgo, Encontros de Fotografia, Coimbra, 1998, Flores para Walt e otras historias, Galeria Maria Martin, Madrid, 1998, The White Sands Project/ion Room, Project Room, ARCO, Madrid, 1998, O Livro do Desassossego, Galeria Luis Serpa, Lisboa, 1997, Tasso, Mois de la Photo, Paris, 1996, Ein Tag in Mostar, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Goethe-Institut, Madrid, 1996, London Diaries, Primavera Foto, Barcelona, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisboa, The Akehurst Gallery, London,1994, A Terra é azul como uma laranja, Galeria Cómicos, Lisboa 1992, Fund. Athos Bulcão, Brasilía, 1995, Cinema Paraíso, Cinema Eden, Lisboa, 1991, My Tangier, Ministério das Finanças, Lisboa, 1991, Para mais tarde recordar, Galeria Ether, Lisboa, 1990 Group exhibitions (selection) Tarefas Infinitas, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa, 2012 (curated by Paulo Pires do Vale) Between Times, Instants, intervals,

durations (Photoespaña.Teatro Fernán Gómez, Centro de Arte . Madrid, Spain, 2010), Da outra margem do Atlântico, alguns exemplos da fotografia e do vídeo português (curated by Paulo Reis, Centro de Artes Hélio Oiticica . Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Parangolé: Fragmentos desde los 90 en Brasil, Portugal y España Patio Herreriano - Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Español, Valladolid (curated by Paulo Reis and David Barro), 2008, 50 Anos de Arte Portuguesa, (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2007), BES Photo, (Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, 2007), Del Zero al 2005, (Fundacion Marcelino Botin, Santander, 2005), Erich Kahn, (Museu de Arte Moderna – Colecção Berardo, Sintra, 2005), 20 + 1, (Centro Galego de Arte Contemporânea, Santiago de Compostela, 2004), We Are The World, (Chelsea Art Museum, New York City, 2004), RE-Location Shake, (National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, 2004), Pallazzo delle Libertà, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, 2003, Arquivo e Simulação - Archive and Simulation, (LisbonPhoto, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, 2003), Artists in Residence 2002-2003, (Location One, New York, 2003), Open Studios, (International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York, 2002), London Art Biennale,(Shoreditch Town Hall, London, 2000), O Autoretrato na Colecção, (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 1999), Linha de Sombra, (Centro de Arte Moderna, Lisbon, 1999), Biennale Internazionale di Fotografia, (Palazzo Bricherasio, Torino, 1997), En la piel de Toro, (Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 1997), Imagens para os Anos 90, (Fundação de Serralves, Porto, Culturgest Lisbon, 1993). Collections (selection) Byrd Hoffman Foundation, New York, Centro de Arte Moderna da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporânea, Santiago de Compostela, Colecção BES, Lisbon, Fundação PLMJ, Lisbon, MEIAC, Badajoz, Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Funchal, Museu de Arte Contemporânea - Colecção Berardo, Sintra, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, Sagamore Art Collection, Miami and The Progressive Collection, Ohio.

DANIEL BLAUFUKS, O guia Baedeker (from the series Um mundo igual a este mas ligeiramente diferente) | 2010 C-Print, 70 x 100 cm, Ed. 3 + 2 AP

DANIEL BLAUFUKS, 29 de Maio de 2013 (from the series Dos dias perdidos), 2014, Inkjet print, 80 x 80 cm, Ed. 3 + 1 PA

DANIEL BLAUFUKS, 24 de Maio de 2013 (from the series Dos dias perdidos), 2014, Inkjet print, 80 x 80 cm, Ed. 3 + 1 PA

DANIEL BLAUFUKS, 28 de Agosto de 2013 (from the series Dos dias perdidos), 2014, Inkjet print, 80 x 80 cm, Ed. 3 + 1 PA

DANIEL BLAUFUKS, O Jardim de Eugene Delacroix, (from the series Um mundo igual a este mas ligeiramente diferente) | 2003, inkjet print, 120 x 160 cm, Ed. 3 + 1 AP

DANIEL BLAUFUKS, Frasco com açucar, (from the series O Ofício de Viver) | 2010, C-Print, 28 x 40 cm, Ed. 3 + 2 AP

DANIEL BLAUFUKS, Mão com pistola de brincar (from the series O Ofício de Viver), | 2010 , C-Print, 70 x 100 cm, Ed. 3 + 2 PA

DANIEL BLAUFUKS, À Espera do Chá, (from the series O Ofício de Viver) | 2010, C-Print, 28 x 40 cm, Ed. 3 + 2 AP

DANIEL BLAUFUKS, Taça e duas tangerinas, (from the series O Ofício de Viver) | 2010, C-Print, 28 x 40 cm, Ed. 3 + 2 AP

We may define Daniel Blaufuks as an artist capable of contradicting the norm, who expandes and deformes the landscape in order to allow different levels of reading that will in many cases elude his initial intentions. To a certain extent, almost all of Daniel Blaufuks´s works are in the manner of a polyphonic experiment, from arranged ideas; a montage of sequences in a cinematic style, independently of the fact that in many cases it does not valorise a narrative linearity, but, rather, a game of language in the sense of Wittengenstein. In Blaufuks´s work everything has to do with the evolution of the thought process, like a river capable of shaping its own course and ending at the right place. Everything is the product of an event about which we know nothing and in which it doesn´t matter who the protagonists are. Everything is true, and what is not, is pure imagination. Or, in any case, a series of notes that will be of use to him in another story in images, one of those stories capable of building itself. Blaufuks is interested in that suspended moment, that is his decisive moment, precisely the non-decision, the event resulting from the space between two virtual events, the moment of lack of communication in this universe of continuous communication, of saturation of apparently decisive instants, that do not allow the encountering of meaning, at every second, in a simple gesture. Thus, each photograph points out an option, a choice, a phrase, word or story. DAVID BARRO

Excavating and remembering Paulo Reis in www.danielblaufuks.com In his book “Sculpting in Time”, [i] the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky discusses that the visual uniformity of an artist lies in that he/she actually undertakes his/her work: an autonomous and consistent discourse that is directed at personal, human and artistic ethics. Having inherited a revolutionary legacy, he defended that the true artist has an ethical obligation and a responsible task, and that each one of us is personally responsible for acknowledging our past in the collective. This is the ultimate example of an artist that transformed aesthetics into human ethics; as proposed by Gabo, Pevesner, Rodchenko and all Russian artists of the first half of the 20th century, Tarkovsky compared the work of a film director to that of a sculptor who, guided by the inner logic of his future work, excludes everything that isn’t part of it. The commitment towards individual truth – which, in the end, is always collective – supported the work of many thinkers in the 20th century, from Walter Benjamin to Primo Levi, Hannah Arendt and Stefan Zweig, Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett, from Piero Manzoni to Yves Klein and Joseph Beuys. Currently, it directs the work of artists that use their art like a voice of our conscience: Hans Haacke, Christian Boltanski, Francis Alys, Thomas Hirschhorn, Costa Vece and Daniel Blaufuks. The advocacy against forgetfulness is central to the work of these artists and it impregnates actuality. Their works stir the ashes of the past in order to warn the present that it is impossible to forget. Daniel Blaufuks works with the ruins of power, and uses memory as the ultimate weapon, creating a narrative built on other narratives, some of them anonymous, others from his own family. Thinking of Daniel Blaufuks’s oeuvre takes me to Walter Benjamin’s intellectual omnipresence. The attachment to memory shown both by the philosopher and by the artist clearly expose the pain and the pleasure of knowing ourselves for what we are. Be it because both of them teach us, through their works, the value of memory, of affection or of despair, while fighting lack of memory, the gap of time, clinging to facts so they will not slip away like water down a drain. Both of them demiurges, warning us: yes, memory must be cultivated, for the good of health and to avoid the disease of ennui, which corrodes the soul. Wandering in the oeuvre of Daniel Blaufuks always

leads me to Walter Benjamin’s memorable writings. Like Benjamin, I think that to write is to digress on the history of what is written, that which the philosopher called “faire de la flannerie.” My interest in the true and sensible mark of the philosopher in maximizing the mnemonic capacity brings me directly to the short, but precious and intense text titled “Excavation and Memory”. Ipso facto, for those who don’t know it, I exalt its eloquence by transcribing it here: Language has unmistakably made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past, but rather a medium. It is the medium of that which is experienced, just as the earth is the medium in which ancient cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.... He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand—like precious fragments or torsos in a collector’s gallery— in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding. It is undoubtedly useful to plan excavations methodically. Yet no less indispensable is the cautious probing of the spade in the dark loam. The man who merely makes an inventory of his findings, while failing to establish the exact location of where in today’s ground the ancient treasures have been stored up, cheats himself of his richest prize. In this sense, for authentic memories, it is far less important that the investigator report on them than that he mark, quite precisely, the site where he gained possession of them. Epic and rhapsodic in the strictest sense, genuine memory must therefore yield an image of the person who remembers, in the same way that a good archaeological report not only informs us about the strata from which its findings originate, but also gives an account of the strata which first had to be broken through .[ii] This short text fits like a glove to Daniel Blaufuks’s image archaeology. Maybe because both are Jews with histories that cross in our time’s space and time, they both tell us it is not possible to forget, that forgetting is immoral! Benjamin, like Primo (Levi), Herbert (August, the artist’s grandfather), and Wladyslaw (Szpilman) are

characters in histories that exist not only in books, films and photographs, their characters are part of a collective history, they belong to the layers of time that lie on top of other layers that were crossed before. The emptiness left by the vanishing of beings in the name of an arbitrary ideology are facts that pierce through the philosopher, that pierced through Daniel Blaufuks, and that pierced through us all historically. This spectre still insists is piercing through us thanks to the current recrudescence of some socio-political systems and increasing nostalgia for Nazi fascism in some European nations. The serpent’s egg is about to hatch again. Just like Walter Benjamin, the artist Daniel Blaufuks thinks in a time-based scale, and one sees that in his oeuvre there is an inclination to stop time, functioning like a Medusa: his look freezes the movement in order to reveal new angles, new interpretations of the real, which were unsuspected until that moment. That is why photography and film become this gaze that is negotiated between the real and its interpretation. His close-ups of little details like fading letters, molding wallpaper, broken glass, dust and dirt in a scene or the slow motion used to investigate and reveal the unexposed (the video work “Traum”). The theory of the allegory and melancholy unfolds a tense dialectics between the verbal and the visual, between silence and tautology. Just like Benjamin, who created an oeuvre fluctuating between the phonetic and the imagery, Blaufuks produces images of timely chiasmus, seeing each picture as a sort of fossil, a personal, but also a collective history. The artist, just like the philosopher, fights against a kind of “natural history of destruction.” As a man, Benjamin accumulated desolation in his passage through this world, and had to choose a lucid form of death by his own hands in order not let himself be taken by the greedy eagerness of the executioner; but as a thinker, he left a unique existential, biographic and philosophic testimony, in which his personal history correlates to the ruin of our history, to that architecture of destruction. Benjamin’s “Mein Kampf” was to write that History is not to quote history, but to live it, because the notion of quoting implies that the historical object being summoned is torn away from its context. In a very important text, “Passages”, Walter Benjamin constructs a painful death of utopia through known pictures; after all, the image is crystallized dialectics. For, while the relationship of the present with the past is purely time-based, the relationship of what has occurred with the now is dialectic – not with a time-based character, but of imagery. Both for Benjamin and for Blaufuks, writing history means to bestow the dates with their own

physiognomy. Blaufuks invites us to contemplate a vast sociocultural fabric, which reflects and shapes our relationships with the environment at the same time as we weave the tissue of our own creation - a representation of ourselves. The world turns out to be always seen and known in the light of the projection we are making of our own inter-subjective condition. This profound desire, to know, is beautifully hidden in a series of strategies in which the most banal experience elicits a descriptionregarding how it is to live on earth by telling us exactly the opposite, how it is not..[iii] Daniel Blaufuks’s characters wear the myth of the little hero, the man without qualities, the fallen angel, the wrong man; many are the film or literary accounts that could explain who these beings are, but the Blaufulksian narrative is based on the real, it is based on histories that were lived, the daily trifles. Blaufuks takes the stand of the historian handling familiar biographic materials, and so he acts as an agent and negotiator of history. Sophie Calle, herself an artist that acts as agent and negotiator of history, asks the viewer: Draw attention / Divert attention. Are you watching? Did you see me? Did you catch me by surprise? It didn’t escape your attention? That to which all answers are, to a certain degree, equivocal. And there it is, all subject matter. If we could answer with a “yes”, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that would be the end of the game, and that wouldn’t be worth this candle that burns in such a “paranerving” and inquisitive way.[i] The puzzle is solved, for there are many ways to narrate a history, be it through scientific research, in an attempt to stick to the facts, or through interpretation, advocating a particular approach. Art that presents itself as true tries to join the two ends of the thread. This is how I think Daniel Blaufuks handles his topics and his characters – deriving from his detailed scientific and philosophic investigation the interpretational grounds for its public exhibition, thus avoiding the artificialness and the apologia of images that are surreal or explicitly violent. He prefers Husserl’s phenomenological approach, encouraging the viewer to construct his/her own narrative based on the fragments and signs presented by the artist. His is the role of the interpreter, or if you prefer an auspicious place, the dialectic mediator of a history that doesn’t belong to him but belongs to him. [i] Tarkovsky, Andrei. Esculpir o tempo. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1990. [ii] Benjamin, Walter. Obras Escolhidas II – Rua de mão única. 5th ed. São Paulo: Brasiliense. [iii] Safran, Yehuda. A Perfect Day [iv] Calle, Sophie, Beaux Art Magazine, Venice Edition, 2007

DANIEL BLAUFUKS, Untitled (from Fรกbrica series) | 2013-2014, Inkjet print, 100 x 170 cm, Ed. 2 + 1 AP

CARLA CABANAS Carla Cabanas (Lisbon, 1979) Solo shows (selection) O que ficou do que foi – O Álbum Martim Moniz (Museu da Cidade, Lisboa, 2014), O que ficou do que foi – O Álbum desconhecido (Sala do Veado, Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência, Lisboa, 2010 ), Histórias sobre mim, (Galeria Magnética, Pavilhão 28, Lisboa, 2010), Tempus Fugit (NOGO - Project Room for Visual Arts, Experimental Cinema, and Architecture, Lisboa, 2009), A casa onde Nasci e outras histórias ( Galeria Carlos Carvalho - Arte Contemporânea, Lisboa, 2009), Travel Pictures (Atelier – Museu António Duarte, Caldas da Rainha, 2008), Carla Cabanas (comissariada por Filipa Oliveira e Miguel Amado, Espaço Arte Contempo, Lisboa, 2007), Lugares (Galeria Bores & Mallo, Cáceres, 2005), Landscapes (comissariada por Luisa Soares Oliveira, Arte por companhia, Sala Pahldata, Lisboa, 2004), Sofia, Exposição de fotografia, (Galeria Arquivo, Leiria, 2001), Conto (Associação de Gravura, Galeria Água Forte, Lisboa, 2003) Group shows (selection) Melhorfuturo 1.0., (Laboratório das Artes, Guimarães, 2012), Premio de Fotografía Purificación García (Círculo de Belas Artes, Madrid, Espanha, 2012), Premio de Fotografía Purificación García, (Biblioteca Central de Santander, Santander, Espanha, 2012), Premio de Fotografía Purificación García, (Domus Artium 2002 (DA2), Salamanca, Espanha, 2012), Festival Internacional de Fotografia de Paraty - Paraty off (Colaboração com Susana Guardado, Paraty e no Ateliê da Imagem, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 2012), Museu Bernardo . Coleção e Mais (Centro Cultural de Sines, Sines, 2011), Kaunas Photo Festival (Portuguese Night of Photography, Kaunas, Lituânia, 2011) Exposição #05 - Encontro entre a paisagem e a abstracção (comissariada por Luísa Especial, Espaço BES Arte & Finança, Lisboa, 2009), PANDORA’S B., BAC! International Festival of contemporary art in Barcelona X Edition, (CCCB-Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona, Barcelona, 2009) Iniciativa X, Arte Contempo, Lisboa.

30 anos/30 dias (Cooperativa de comunicação e Cultura, Torres Vedras, 2009), Madrid Foto, Galeria Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea, Madrid, 2009) Impossible Exchange, (Frieze Art Fair, Londres, 2009) Mobilehome (comissariada por Nuno Faria, Lagar das Portas do Céu, Loulé, 2009), eARTh (Espacio de Arte OTR, Madrid, 2009), Mostra de Fotografia do Programa Gulbenkian Criatividade e Criação Artística (Galeria de Exposições Temporárias da Sede da Fundação Gulbenkian, Lisboa, 2008), Exposição #01 (Espaço BES Arte & Finança, Lisboa, 2008), FAL - Feira de Arte de Lisboa, (Galeria Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea, Lisboa, 2008), Realidades Abertas (comissariada por Rubén Blanco Hervés, Galeria Sargadelos, Santiago de Compostela, Espanha, 2007), Realidades Abertas (comissariada por Rubén Blanco Hervés, Galeria Sargadelos, Corunha, Espanha, 2007), Opções Futuros #2 (comissariada por Miguel Amado, Espaço Arte Contempo, Lisboa, 2006), Surrounding Matta-Clark (comissariada por Paulo Reis, Galeria Carlos Carvalho - Arte Contemporânea, lisboa, 2006), Urbanismo, linhas e contornos (Galeria 24b,Oeiras, 2006), F2ª Prémio Pintura Ariane de ROTHSCHILD, Palácio Galveias, Lisboa, 2005, 13:sete (comissariada por Miguel Amado, Galeria Sete, Coimbra, 2005), Alojamentos (exposição da Escola de Artes Visuais Maumaus, Campo dos Mártires da Pátria, Lisboa, 2005), Iniciativa X, (Arte Contempo, Lisboa, 2005) “Expect the World (Video Screening comissariado por Solvej Ovesen, Ana Pinto e Estelle Blaschke, Museu do Chiado, Lisboa, 2001), Expect the World (Video Screening comissariado por Solvej Ovesen, Ana Pinto e Estelle Blaschke, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlim, Alemanha, 2001) Collections BES - Art_Colecção Banco Espírito Santo”, Lisboa. Colecção P.L.M.J. , Lisboa. Colecção Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild Europe, Lisboa.

CARLA CABANAS, O que ficou do que foi - O álbum desconhecido - Três mulheres | 2012 Intervention on inkjet print, 80 x 80 cm, Ed. 2 + 1 AP

CARLA CABANAS, O que ficou do que foi - O รกlbum desconhecido - vรกrias pessoas num barco | 2012 Intervention on inkjet print, 60 x 80 cm, Ed. 2 + 1 AP

CARLA CABANAS, O que ficou do que foi - Álbum São Tomé e Príncipe - Vista parcial da cidade | 2013 Intervention on inkjet print, 40 x 60 cm, Ed. 2 + 1 AP

CARLA CABANAS, O que ficou do que foi - Álbum São Tomé e Príncipe - Vista parcial da cidade | 2013 Intervention on inkjet print, 40 x 60 cm (detail)

MARIA DO MAR FAZENDA Lisbon, February 2012 In a cold sunny Saturday I went to the studio where Carla Cabanas was finishing her pieces that are now being presented at Sala do Veado and collected in this catalogue. Before I describe to you the reason why I was fifteen minutes late that day, let us stop for a while to consider this object that holds this text and the images I am trying to respond.

chance). The feeling that this set sends back evokes the Freudian notion of uncanny – something at once familiar and foreign. In fact, uncanny could replace the word photography (light+writing); the fixed image can always summon this simultaneous occurrence of such opposite feelings. A time lapse expressed in a fragment of a whole (history), isolated from its setting and not anchored to a text, holds a ghost-like presence destined to become a forgotten memory.

What remains of what was – before correcting it, I was writing from memory: what was written of what was… and I wonder if it could be the same thing, that just what remains inscribed (written down, described, reproduced) is what endures – What remains of what was, so far, collects two series: “Album Cabanas” and “Album Unknown”. The production dates for the works are, respectively, 2010/11 and 2011/2012, even if we can find this dating somewhat imprecise. The creative process engaged by Carla Cabanas is recurrently asking us to make memory (personal and emotional) and the technical history of photography (the use of pinhole cameras or old photos take us to that timeline) coincide. If we consider that in these two albums are gathered black and white square-type photos in white frames, and some of these images have been, to a more cautious view, fixated on glass, we come to the conclusion that these photographs belong not to this digital century, but to the beginning of the previous one, or even the final period of the century before that one: the century that witnessed the birth of photography. By a close reading of the image (landscape, architecture, furniture, clothing, posture, eye rapport, etc.) we manage to locate the images’ different times somewhere between our own recognition of collective history and the empathy we establish with each life’s events. These two sets of photos, gathered and pinned down by the artist, differ from one another in the affection that the images themselves had evoked beforehand. The original photos gathered by Carla Cabanas in “Album Cabanas” portray people, places and genealogies which, even if distant from her memory, are retraceable by the artist and in which the viewer acknowledges a familiar feel. In “Album Unknown” different eras, families, countries, are gathered. It is a completely fabricated community – a memory, a history. I don’t mean by this that it is not authentic or even that it can not deliver us a sense of familiarity. (One can actually find oneself in this geography of

Let us go back to that winter Saturday morning. Carla Cabanas’ studio is located on a third floor of a building in one large avenue in Lisbon. That morning that important street was closed to traffic because it would be the passageway for a demonstration. The only restlessness that could be felt was the clanking of objects being handled in an antique market that occupy the avenue’s middle gardens. The tar carpets were (meanwhile) silent, empty, filled with my memories of people and drive-by cars. Unknowingly, this trail by different times and absent spaces, was preparing me for the introduction to those forgotten memories Carla Cabanas was bringing back to life, in her studio. A geography of chance was being mapped, right there, silently. An album we all are also, by nature, part of. While she was contextualizing “Album Unknown” within her previous work, Carla Cabanas was telling me she didn’t have that many memories. That she

didn’t know that many stories about herself. Much of her previous work, on which we took some time, had started from the same drive: to record the time one takes to describe eras, memories, forgetting. Through recollection, reporting by heart, times and places were once described to the artist, by several close and notso-close friends, strangers and not-so-strangers. In the process of inscribing the fragments of other people’s lives, or even, sometimes, changing narratives to include her own voice, the artist finds her memories in others’. That special connection to memory, to history, is a much human characteristic. We turn to memory and history to find identity. History is made of text and image, perchance in equal amounts. And even though images are as easy to forge as text, images – especially photography – have that weight, that strong aura of authenticity. Images are as if conventions of certain evidence. “Album Unknown” then places us in this mist, of authenticity, familiarity and intimacy. We can, however, trace analogies (it is comforting) between photographs: repeated elements (a window, a tree); the same people trying out their poses (around a table, on a boat); motives for taking pictures (a family trip, a photo to send the boyfriend). Relationships between images and the treatment the artist has devoted them; the many evidence there documented up against what is outlined, erased or veiled create a narrative channelling the familiarity and the oddness

of these photos to a shared plane. That Saturday, I left the studio with the feeling that the photos gathered, collected and later interventioned by Carla Cabanas were already her own text, memory and history. And ours. On the way back, I remembered W.G. Sebald’s novels, the essential duality between text and image in his storybuilding, the first feeling that his novels are realistic and they resemble autobiographical narratives. In his books, as in the inscription method used by Cabanas, the narrator’s voice is always first person but not always speaking with the author’s voice. Even though Sebald denies that the events described in his novels ever took place, his inclusion of evidence (images) in the text lead us back to an hesitation between what we believe is real and what we believe is fiction. And we try to restore those gaps with what is ours or with what we find of us in others. It is a known fact that Sebald would often take photocopies to enlarge or reduce an array of photos and other visual material, in the alleged intention of reproducing them in his manuscripts. In his first novels, images resembled photocopies, worn out, faded, images destitute from visual data or reference that text complements. It is the deeds of people like Sebald that help us understand why the greek goddess Mnemosyne endowed poets with the gift of memory. It is no coincidence that Aby

Views from the exhibition Saudades e lagrimas são o unico lenitivo para a grande auzencia - From November 2013 to January 2014, Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea

Warburg, in early 20 th century, called his project Atlas Mnemosyne, after collecting, editing and establishing relationships between images of the most varied origins. The same obsessive need to understand the world, by drawing it, is what brings Warburg and Sebald’s projects close to one another. Coincidence, analogy and affinity also play an important role in the construction of these geographies of chance. In fact, they never really are. Because memory awakens memories from the most insignificant element; that element will always be evidence of something. The first photograph. Exotic fruit is being served to white military men by a black woman. The photo quality takes us back to the dawn of photographic technique. We cannot tell for sure who the colonials or the colonizers are, nor identify the colony. But we can recognize, in the photo, attitudes/notions belonging to a meanwhile obsolete western thinking. Language, the world, has changed. The first of the last photos. Someone is being portrayed in the Tagus’s south bank, having both the April 25 Bridge (Salazar Bridge, at the time) and Lisbon’s vistas in the background. This is a reading made from this point of view. Somewhere else, this bridge may as well be the Golden Gate, and San Francisco in the dim horizon. Or, yet, it can be a bridge over a river where the absent person is filled in by the memory of a self. I realize, now, that before I have described these images using a paradoxical term, memories are never forgotten. They always go back to whoever reads them, in a present time. http://www.carlacabanas.com

CARLA CABANAS, O que ficou do que foi - O álbum São Tomé e Príncipe - Un trecho da Cidade | 2013, Intervention on inkjet print, 40 x 60 cm, Ed. 2 + 1 AP

CARLA CABANAS, O que ficou do que foi - O รกlbum Martim Moniz | 2013, Intervention on inkjet print, 40 x 40 cm, Ed. 2 + 1 AP

CARLA CABANAS, O que ficou do que foi - O รกlbum Martim Moniz | atelier views

CARLA CABANAS, O que ficou do que foi - O รกlbum Martim Moniz | 2013, Intervention on inkjet print, 40 x 40 cm, Ed. 2 + 1 AP

MANUEL VILARIÑO A Coruña, Spain, 1952 Exposições individuais (selecção) Manuel Vilariño – Mar de Afuera (Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid. Madrid, Spain, 2012), Donde las ausencias abren sus alas, (Instituto Cervantes . Paris, France, 2009), Terra em Trance (Museo de Bellas Artes . Montevideo, Spain, 2009), Terra em Trance (Museu Arte S. Paulo . S. Paulo, Brazil, 2009), Ni sombra ni lugar (Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea . Lisbon, Portugal, 2008), Instante Amarillo (Galeria Metta . Madrid, Spain, 2007), Instante Amarillo (Galeria Trinta . Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 2007), Manuel Vilariño Fío e sombra (Centro Galego de Arte Contemporânea . Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 2002), Galería la Fabrica (Madrid, Spain, 2002), Galerie Municipale Le Château d’Eau, Toulouse, France, 200, Emboscadura (Circulo de Bellas Artes . Madrid, Spain, 1998) Exposições colectivas (selecção) 50x60 Polaroid Gigante (Biblioteca Nacional del Perú . Lima, Peru, 2012), 50x60 Polaroid Gigante (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas . Parque Central Caracas, Venezuela, 2011), La Colección (Fundación Barrié. A Coruña, Spain, 2011), Premios Nacionales de Fotografía en los fondos de la Colección Alcobendas Alhóndiga, Segovia, Spain, En construcción 3 Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza . A Coruña, Espanha), Antes de ayer y passado mañana; o lo que puede ser pintura hoy (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Unión Fenosa – Macuf . A Coruña, Spain, 2009), A little history of photography (curated by Manuel Segade, CGAC Centro Galego de Arte Contemporáneo . Santiago de Compostela, Spain), Paradiso Spezzato Paraíso Fragmentado (52ª Bienal de Veneza, Pabellón de Espanha . Venice, Itália), Cuatro direcciones. Fotografía contemporánea española 1970-1990, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía . Madrid, Spain, 1991 Colections (selection) Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Espanha, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Espanha, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, United

States, Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Comtemporáneo , Badajoz, Spain, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Unión Fenosa, A Coruña, Spain, Fundación Coca-Cola Espanha, Madrid, Espanha Spain, Colección Galerie de Phographie Le Château d’Eau, Toulouse

MANUEL VILARIÑO, A la aurora 3 | 2005, Ilfochrome sobre aluminium, 150 x 150 cm, Ed. 5 + 1 PA

MANUEL VILARIﾃ前, Lejano interior 23 | 2008, ilfochrome on aluminium, 120 x 170 cm, Ed. 5 + 1 PA

MANUEL VILARIﾃ前, Montaﾃｱa negra, Nuble blanca 2 | 1999, Dyptich, Gelatine silver print, 120 x 120 cm, Ed. 5 + 1 AP

MANUEL VILARIﾃ前, Black mountain | 2008, Hahnemﾃｼhle sobre alumﾃｭnio, 60 x 80 cm, Ed. 5 + 1 AP

MANUEL VILARIﾃ前, Los pﾃ｡jaros | 1981-1989, Hahnemﾃｼhle sobre alumﾃｭnio, 12 x 115 x 115 cm each, Ed. 5 + 1 AP

MANUEL VILARIﾃ前, Al despertar | 2011, Hahnemﾃｼhle s/ aluminium, 150 x 150 cm, Ed. 5 + 1 AP

MANUEL VILARIﾃ前, Lejano interior #28 | 2008, duratrans and stainess steel, 42 x 64 cm, Ed. 5 + 1 AP

MANUEL VILARIﾃ前, 66ﾂｺ N | 2008, duratrans and stainess steel, 42 x 64 cm, Ed. 5 + 1 PA

CARLOS CARVALHO ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA Rua Joly Braga Santos, Lte. F - r/c + (351) 217 261 831 | + (351) 217 210 874 carloscarvalho-ac@carloscarvalho-ac.com http://www.carloscarvalho-ac.com From Mon to Fri: 10am to 7:30pm / Sat: 12:00 to 7:30pm