On my way back from Porto to Lisbon, I had the chance of a short stop in Coimbra, to see some of the exhibitions for the “Anozero 19” Biennale.
Coimbra is a very old and beautiful university town, well worth a visit. The Biennale was spread out through the university buildings , and I would add a little hard to find! I saw a lot of interesting science exhibits in the Science department before making my way to some of the art works for example.
The theme of the Biennale was centered around the impact of the river Mondego in the city, and articulated through 5 words : silence, passage, marginal, invention, militancy- a theme broad enough for very varied perspectives.
I started by seeing the part of the Biennale located in the Arts department of the University- in an amazing historical building with extremely high ceilings and an inner courtyard.
This large format photograph stood out immediately with the shadows of the plants creating another layer over the faces, in a dreamy atmosphere. They eyes of the figures are closed and I possibly thought them blind, the pose is strange and the expressions unreadable, so it is unclear what is happening here.
This work is by Polish artist Joanna Piotrowska , who explores ambivalent and dysfunctional family relationships through these delicate, dreamy staged scenes in black and white photographs.
The next room showed large scale paintings by the Portuguese artist Joao Gabriel, especially commissioned for the Biennale. The subjects are taken from screenshots from gay porn movies from the 70s. The paintings are large scale, so the blurry bodies are almost life sized.
The subjectmatter and the blue-brown colour scheme reminded me of paintings by Patrick Angus.
I really like how little detail Gabriel gives to the figures, they are faceless and painted in rough, seemingly quick brushstrokes.
There is a boldness in the approach , and in how much he dares to leave unfinished, like the head here only outlined, that I really like.
I have a tendency of becoming much too detailed and overworking my pieces, so this was a refreshing approach.
This little panel of a bird in the streaming water, painted in large brushstrokes on a crooked piece of cardboard, was the only painting without the human couples, and I liked how it also had a smaller scale, and offered a welcome break in the display .
French artist Mattia Denisse used green table tops and posters on the walls to exhibit a large amount of imagined books that “will be printed in the future”.
They cover a large area of subjects, from scientific books of imagined subjects to historical novels of imagined facts.
I really enjoyed the humour, with absurd scientific tables or wordplays. I also really appreciated the skillful combination of drawing and text, or geometrical schemes in an appealing graphic language.
I am not sure the presentation gave the best of the work. The identical format and repetition was less interesting to look at than an exhibition with varying formats and maybe frames to create highlights and some tension. But maybe this sloppier newspaper way showed another aspect of how we are flooded by information that looks easy to either absorb or oversee, and it is only on a second or third look that you catch the absurdity or the humor in it.
I almost missed the installation of Bruno Zhu in the midst of the artefacts in the Science department, as I took it for a permanent exhibit.
Surrounded by instruments from historical times, he installed modern, small every day utensils on some white clean especially crafted pouches, thus elevating nail clippers or dish washing brushes to a historical object to look back at from the future. It was an interesting way to look at objects we take for granted with a new perspective, elevating them to a collection of curiosities.
On my hunt for more artworks, I saw a whole geological exhibition of interesting mineral formations, but unfortunately did not make it to any further exhibitions from the Biennale before having to return to Lisbon. These glimpses were rewarding though, and I will make sure to return with more time next time.
Clara's Drawing 2 