Besart Banco Espírito Santo Collection the Present: an Inﬁnite Dimension

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_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 2 22/12/08 13:39:20 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 3 22/12/08 13:39:21 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 4 22/12/08 13:39:21 When speaking to me about photography, a Brazilian friend of mine read an excerpt from Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, which to me clarifies the mystery of the process: ‘What photography reproduces to infinity only happened once. It mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.’ Also, ‘photography is nothing more than an alternate line of “Look”, “See”, “Here it is”; it points to a certain opposite.’ The Banco Espírito Santo photography collection allows for this ‘opposite’ experience through an anthological vision of photographic production from the 1980s to our current times. This collection travels through signs but also through the technical evolution of photographic representation. It shows the infinite diversity of contemporary production: from portrait to landscape, from conceptual art to photo-journalism, whether using the traditional principles of the analogue negative or the newest digital and image processing techniques. The BESart collection exhibited here is the most significant collection of contemporary photography in Portugal, comprising work from modern artists to the youngest generation of creators. The public can now share this line of ‘Look’, ‘See’, ‘Here it is’ with us.

José Berardo Honorary Chairman of the Fundação de Arte Moderna e Contemporânea – Colecção Berardo

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 4 22/12/08 13:39:21 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 5 22/12/08 13:39:21 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 6 22/12/08 13:39:21 Throughout its entire history, the Banco Espírito Santo has been active in cultural patronage, for instance with the Ricardo Espírito Santo Silva Foundation. Nowadays, photography has found its place as a relevant artistic expression in contemporary art. In 2004, the Banco Espírito Santo decided to make photography the main focus of its cultural patronage policy, since it deems photography to integrate both innovation and being at the forefront, which is in line with the bank’s philosophy. Banco Espírito Santo, the patron of photography in Portugal, has been pro- moting and publicing many initiatives, including BES Photo, BES Revelação and partnerships with signiﬁcant cultural agents. It recently inaugurated BES Arte & Finança, a space with unique characteristics, at Praça Marquês de Pombal, which is also intended for the promotion of photography and will contribute to the emergence of new talents in Portugal. Within this context, the BESart – Banco Espírito Santo Collection was initi- ated. The collection was started in 2004, with the acquisition of national and international works that are deemed relevant. It includes mainly works from the twenty-ﬁrst century, so as to follow the current perspectives of contemporary art, which corresponds with the way the bank operates in its core activities, seeking to always be at the forefront of the global market. The bank has proudly provided all the necessary means to substantiate the Banco Espírito Santo collection and it is now time to present it to the public.

The catalogue of the collection will be published simultaneously with the exhibition organised by Museu Colecção Berardo and curated by María de Corral and Lorena Martínez de Corral, as this is the ﬁrst time such a large part of the BESart – Banco Espírito Santo Collection is exhibited to the public. The BESart collection was developed due to the determination and effort of the curator Alexandra Fonseca Pinho, to whom I am deeply grateful for her excellent work. I would also like to show my appreciation to the entire team of Museu Colecção Berardo, to the curators for their excellent work and the extremely professional way it was carried out; to all authors of the texts which made this catalogue even richer; and also to all those who contributed to the success of the BESart project.

Ricardo Salgado Chairman of the Executive Committee / Banco Espírito Santo

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 6 22/12/08 13:39:21 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 7 22/12/08 13:39:21 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 8 22/12/08 13:39:21 The BESart – Banco Espírito Santo Collection was founded in 2004 following the initiative of the President of the Executive Committee, who had the foresight of breaking new ground among Portuguese institutions, with the creation of an international collection of contemporary photography. I was offered the challenge of constituting a collection of works by contemporary artists who use photography as their medium. From the start, a number of approaches were adopted, that are reﬂected in the current structure of the collection:

We started by acquiring works by both national and international renowned artists, creating a dialogue between their work and that of of artists from younger emerging generations. We have opted to collect representative pieces, instead of acquiring large series, to be able to include a greater number of artists with distinct bodies of work. We have favoured the acquisition of work produced in the twenty-ﬁrst century, instead of opting for a retrospective collection, in order to best convey the unique vision of artists about our shared contemporaneity.

This project aims to respond to the continuing evolution of art and to the new di- rections in which photography is used. In fact, photography is a medium familiar to all artists, but each displays very distinct formal approaches to it. Currently, the BESart collection consists of 451 works by 176 artists, which represent a wide range of generations and backgrounds. This diversity of artistic expression is one of the strengths of the collection, and it is through this variety of styles that we attempt to enrich the dialogue about the art of our times. The all-encompassing theme of the collection is contemporaneity, and underlying it is the subject of time, the same time that is suspended in the photographic image, and also the time that by passing will reveal the true value of the collection that is currently being formed. I would like to thank all those who through their advise, support, and enthusi- asm have made this project possible.

Alexandra Fonseca Pinho Curator of BESart – Colecção Banco Espírito Santo

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13 The Present: An Inﬁnite Dimension María de Corral / Lorena Martínez de Corral

27 Exhibited works

367 BESart Banco Espírito Santo Collection

429 Authors’ biographies

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Photography is a medium capable of immediately transforming the act of seeing into an image of what we see. It is present in all parts of the Universe: it plays an educational role in all societies and in every part of our lives, whether it is private or public, personal or work, or the arena of commerce and advertising. Photography unveils desires and passions, fantasy and power, criticism and violence, nostalgia and reality. In sum, it forms an immense archive of life. The exhibition The Present: An Infinite Dimension is a full overview of the photography collection which the Banco Espírito Santo has assembled over the last four years, with over 400 works by more than 170 artists, both Portuguese and foreign, well-established and emerging. This highly varied collection of photographic images offers us first-hand knowledge of the changes and advances that have taken place in contemporary art in the last twenty years. To collect is to capture a particular view on a period, and a collection must accept that art is the result of a creative, social and historical context. This exhibition springs from the Banco Espírito Santo’s desire to share the need to speak of the present with a broad cross-section of the public and to imagine a hypothetical future through artworks, as well as to offer a panoramic view on the world that only artists can give us. The BESart collection offers us a diversity of viewpoints, inviting all of us to reflect upon our reality, stimulated by works that illustrate both the marks of the past and diverse cultural, social, economic and political aspects of our present. The collection includes works on subjects such as the subjectivity of photography, a return to realism, and the relation between theoretical photography and general aesthetics. In contemporary art, photography has become somewhat less pragmatic in a technical sense, and more creative in a poetic one. In other words, it has become more a process than a medium. Historically, the photograph was a document traditionally associated with the rhetoric of an emotional language that has gone so far as to regulate the perception and evolution of documentary images. Today, however, there are thousands of codes with which to interpret photography and its multiple readings. Until the 1980s, photography was barely accepted as art. That is why postmodernism forced the matter, showing us how photography (as an infinitely dispersed representation of reality) is the medium through which we can see everything.

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Photography is a medium capable of immediately transforming the act of see- The exhibition The Present: An Infinite Dimension, drawn from the BESart ing into an image of what we see. It is present in all parts of the Universe: it plays collection, is a selection of works linked by a subtle thread that seeks to offer a an educational role in all societies and in every part of our lives, whether it is summarised view of the most significant characteristics of artistic practice in private or public, personal or work, or the arena of commerce and advertising. recent decades. It fosters an understanding of the different kinds of behaviour Photography unveils desires and passions, fantasy and power, criticism and vio- that stem from a commitment to the here and now. At first glance, we could say lence, nostalgia and reality. In sum, it forms an immense archive of life. that the emphasis is placed on diversity, more than on a formal or thematic unity. The exhibition The Present: An Infinite Dimension is a full overview of the pho- Nevertheless, the works selected are linked by many different types of connec- tography collection which the Banco Espírito Santo has assembled over the last tions, creating codes that resound throughout the exhibition. After all, it is no four years, with over 400 works by more than 170 artists, both Portuguese and easy task to penetrate the overflowing nature of current art, and in that sense, foreign, well-established and emerging. This highly varied collection of photo- this exhibition is also conceived as a kind of story. A story that unfolds in a se- graphic images offers us first-hand knowledge of the changes and advances that ries of settings, or sections, that link proposals from different generations of have taken place in contemporary art in the last twenty years. Portuguese or foreign artists. These divisions in no way seek to classify or cat- To collect is to capture a particular view on a period, and a collection must egorise; they are intended only as a way of adding fluidity and clarity to the route. accept that art is the result of a creative, social and historical context. This Each of the eight sections focuses on certain traits, obsessions or shared ideas, exhibition springs from the Banco Espírito Santo’s desire to share the need to strange affinities or peculiar encounters, independent of geography and beyond speak of the present with a broad cross-section of the public and to imagine a any fixed time frame. The proposals are characterised by their diverse nature and hypothetical future through artworks, as well as to offer a panoramic view on the bring out the plurality of possibilities that coexist in contemporary photography. world that only artists can give us. The BESart collection offers us a diversity of The idea behind the selection of works and its grouping in thematic sections – viewpoints, inviting all of us to reflect upon our reality, stimulated by works that Portraits; Architectures; Natures; Narratives, Fictions and Realities; Spaces, Places illustrate both the marks of the past and diverse cultural, social, economic and and Objects; Concepts, Ideas and Criticism; Society and Urban Life; and Private political aspects of our present. Universes – is to present photography as a fascinating medium filled with multiple The collection includes works on subjects such as the subjectivity of photo- facets, and to emphasise the diversity and depth of artistic thinking in this field. graphy, a return to realism, and the relation between theoretical photography and general aesthetics. In contemporary art, photography has become somewhat less pragmatic in a technical sense, and more creative in a poetic one. In other words, 1. Nature it has become more a process than a medium. In themes related to nature, there is a constant exploration of how the notion Historically, the photograph was a document traditionally associated with the of landscape has been represented in recent times. Among the diverse modes rhetoric of an emotional language that has gone so far as to regulate the percep- of representing natural subjects we find the classical and sometimes romantic tion and evolution of documentary images. Today, however, there are thousands landscapes by Josef Koudelka, Thomas Joshua Cooper or Valter Vinagre, which of codes with which to interpret photography and its multiple readings. Until are linked to the appearance of the world as it has been perpetuated through the the 1980s, photography was barely accepted as art. That is why postmodernism photographic image, existing in its totality, without hierarchy or typology. Olafur forced the matter, showing us how photography (as an infinitely dispersed repre- Eliasson also sets his eye on nature, but without portraying it as a monumen- sentation of reality) is the medium through which we can see everything. tal setting that terrifies humanity. His images provide a natural and subjective

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portrait of the Northern landscapes and of the passage of time. Another approach to capturing nature is linked to technological advances, the massive exploitation of resources and urban development, all of which have provoked the emergence of an ecological conscience and new concepts of social or artificial nature, as can be seen in the work of Nuno Cera. Others have arrived at nature later, starting from an urban point of view, as is the case of Peter Fischli and David Weiss. Artists such as Axel Hütte, Isaac Julien or Doug Aitken have a particular way of defining beauty, prolonging the sensation that the image has no limits. This is also linked to a very specific way of placing the horizon. Both of these ideas are fundamental to especially Aitken’s work. Placement, understood as the will not to intervene in making the world visible, but instead, only participating in that process, bears no judgement or commentary, neither presence nor apparition. Many of the images offer viewers the opportunity to reflect on the beauty and serenity of the landscape, as for instance Elgar Esser does in his work. In recent years, the landscape has been reinterpreted using more rationalist or conceptual components; symbolism, abstraction or popular culture have been vehicles for reflection on questions on space and time, and others related to science and anthropology. This is the case with Gabriela Albergaria, Rodney Graham and Samuel Rama. Others, such as Tacita Dean, suggest a reflection on patience, temporality, extinction and material discontinuity. Gabriel Orozco is interested in the frictitious spaces between country and city, the organic and inorganic, the ‘artificial’ and ‘natural’, on the cusp of which many of his photographic works are generated.

2. Private Universes Photography has an analytical and descriptive capacity that makes the objects it produces unique. Through the objects and spaces it represents, photography insistently recalls domestic settings in which the most everyday, normal and trivial acts of daily existence occur. At times, in its vulnerability and intimacy, it reveals details that speak of a life that sometimes remains unseen, or unnoticed – details that try to explain a space frozen in time in which someone has lived. This is the case in Erwin Olaf’s work, many of whose images somehow belong to daily life, in which there is a distinction between the banal and the more-or-less exceptional. Wolfgang Tillmans’ work explores the subtle textures, densities and surfaces of the world around us, with a complete focus on each body or object. He sometimes seems to want to erase the existing aesthetic hierarchy between organic and man-made, natural and artiﬁcial.

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portrait of the Northern landscapes and of the passage of time. Another approach The places where ambiguous and inexplicable things occur are imaginary reg- to capturing nature is linked to technological advances, the massive exploitation isters or private universes that deal with solitude, in which images of the femi- of resources and urban development, all of which have provoked the emergence nine, suggestive and poetic occur (Susana Mendes Silva), or those that provoke of an ecological conscience and new concepts of social or artificial nature, as unease (Jorge Molder). Jemima Stehli’s images evoke an unusual situation that can be seen in the work of Nuno Cera. Others have arrived at nature later, starting somehow only seems possible from the camera’s vantage point, as it differs from from an urban point of view, as is the case of Peter Fischli and David Weiss. the human one. Artists such as Axel Hütte, Isaac Julien or Doug Aitken have a particular way Aino Kannisto’s theatrical self-portraits present a series of universes, each of of defining beauty, prolonging the sensation that the image has no limits. This is which revolves around a different role in its setting. The artist clearly differenti- also linked to a very specific way of placing the horizon. Both of these ideas are ates each role according to the stage on which they take place, their appear- fundamental to especially Aitken’s work. Placement, understood as the will not to ance and their behaviour. Adelina Lopes’s images are also staged, but instead of intervene in making the world visible, but instead, only participating in that proc- referring to reality or pictorial representation, they are purely products of photo- ess, bears no judgement or commentary, neither presence nor apparition. Many graphic techniques. of the images offer viewers the opportunity to reflect on the beauty and serenity One characteristic of photographs as imagined art of the human body, and as of the landscape, as for instance Elgar Esser does in his work. representations of the atmospheric quality of social or other settings, is presented In recent years, the landscape has been reinterpreted using more rationalist with urgency and immediacy in Marta Sicurella’s work, and in that of others such or conceptual components; symbolism, abstraction or popular culture have been as Anna Gaskell’s, whose images seems like fiction carried to its extreme: part of a vehicles for reflection on questions on space and time, and others related to science private fantasy that deals with the flow of life, appearance, trickery and happiness. and anthropology. This is the case with Gabriela Albergaria, Rodney Graham and Samuel Rama. Others, such as Tacita Dean, suggest a reflection on patience, temporality, extinction and material discontinuity. Gabriel Orozco is interested in the 3. Portraits frictitious spaces between country and city, the organic and inorganic, the ‘artificial’ Historically, portraits have sought to represent the human figure. This definition and ‘natural’, on the cusp of which many of his photographic works are generated. implies the diverse approaches artists can adopt in reproducing the physical appearance of an individual, or reflecting his or her psychological profile, or even a specific situation. Boo Ritson’s or Helena Almeida’s portraits confront the viewer 2. Private Universes with questions about the character of the portrait and the identity of the sitter. Photography has an analytical and descriptive capacity that makes the objects it A common tendency among artists is a deliberate ambiguity in the reproduc- produces unique. Through the objects and spaces it represents, photography in- tion of their own authenticity. This is the case with intimate portraits that display sistently recalls domestic settings in which the most everyday, normal and trivial the artists’ lives and their surroundings. Those photographers work with subjects acts of daily existence occur. At times, in its vulnerability and intimacy, it reveals that suggest an inner life only partially accessible through their work, as is shown details that speak of a life that sometimes remains unseen, or unnoticed – details by Júlia Ventura and Rita Magalhães. that try to explain a space frozen in time in which someone has lived. This is the In her photographs of street scenes and self-portraits, Orlan explores and case in Erwin Olaf’s work, many of whose images somehow belong to daily life, shows us the diverse identities that make up her reality. Using digital retouching, in which there is a distinction between the banal and the more-or-less exceptional. she illustrates a hybridisation of genders, cultures, historical periods and artistic Wolfgang Tillmans’ work explores the subtle textures, densities and surfaces practices with an accentuated political dimension that is both feminist and open of the world around us, with a complete focus on each body or object. He some- to the world. times seems to want to erase the existing aesthetic hierarchy between organic and man-made, natural and artificial.

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João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva use staging as a process of summarising to emphasise the problems and plots of a story without a narrative thread, that offers the possibility of narrative synthesis in the realm of the symbolic and the representation of enigmas or visual hieroglyphs. In contrast, Julião Sarmento’s photographs have an appearance that simultaneously reveals and hides things. The use of images of adolescents as material for many of the current generation does not necessarily indicate a concern for the subject of identity. Often they are portraits that speciﬁcally avoid identity. What Mona Hatoum and Rineke Dijkstra want to capture is a certain taste, style and attitude associated with a generation. To do so, they have created deliberately trivial and ambiguous images. Sarah Jones photographs adolescent girls with grumpy expressions in luxuriously decorated bourgeois spaces. The photographs are intended to be emotionally striking because their feelings are almost the only aspect of these girls’ lives that no one seems to have worried about. The work of certain artists, such as Rodney Graham, Christian Boltanski or Vik Muniz, shows how photography transcends the limits of the genre by its own nature, and as a result its importance in contemporary art. Zang Huan’s work is structured in series in which they recreate constructed scenes. They are mostly social portraits, often resulting from his performances. For some artists, such as Thomas Ruff, Irving Penn and Eurico Lino do Vale, photography is a fundamentally ideal medium for recreating what is on the surface, rather than what lies beneath it. In that sense, their portraits have no psychological pretense whatsoever. On the contrary, they are conceived with a certain uniformity. Ruff speciﬁcally avoids the effects that add drama to an object, working in a context of neutral and uniform lighting that introduces no rhetorical elements or factors that would alter the presence of the object he sets out to portray. This neutrality brings out the chosen object, distinguishing it from its context and endowing it with an autonomous presence. Pierre Gonnord argues that he selects his contemporaries in the anonymity of the large cities, because, beneath the skin, their faces tell singular and astonishing stories about our time, portraying social realities. Events like 9/11 led Andres Serrano to show the world what his country means to him. Through the America series, he approaches the great diversity of the United States’ citizens. The series shows characters and professions whose monumental representation, transcendental air and halo of diffused sacredness remind us of a gallery of martyrs and saints.

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João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva use staging as a process of summarising 4. Narrations, Fictions and Realities to emphasise the problems and plots of a story without a narrative thread, that What we see is not what it seems. Often, the artists themselves appear on the offers the possibility of narrative synthesis in the realm of the symbolic and the stages of their narrative fictions. Such is the case of Helena Almeida and Vasco representation of enigmas or visual hieroglyphs. In contrast, Julião Sarmento’s Araújo. Sometimes the same artist plays different roles, assuming fictitious photographs have an appearance that simultaneously reveals and hides things. identities, at other times they are played by actors or everyday people. A strict The use of images of adolescents as material for many of the current genera- differentiation between fiction and reality is no longer valid for certain contem- tion does not necessarily indicate a concern for the subject of identity. Often porary photographic works. Moreover, the boundary that separates the real from they are portraits that specifically avoid identity. What Mona Hatoum and Rineke the unreal has been lost forever. Dijkstra want to capture is a certain taste, style and attitude associated with a Artists like Sophie Calle have shaped our imagination and visual memory. Her generation. To do so, they have created deliberately trivial and ambiguous images. photographs invite us into her own world, which oscillates between dreams and Sarah Jones photographs adolescent girls with grumpy expressions in luxuriously reality. A growing number of contemporary photographers are involved with an decorated bourgeois spaces. The photographs are intended to be emotionally ever-greater tendency to ‘make’ photographs, rather than simply taking them. striking because their feelings are almost the only aspect of these girls’ lives that Nowadays, many photographers maintain that no situation can be observed with- no one seems to have worried about. out the observer feeling affected by it, and they work according to that maxim. The work of certain artists, such as Rodney Graham, Christian Boltanski or Exploring the social dynamics of being a twenty-first-century photographer, they Vik Muniz, shows how photography transcends the limits of the genre by its own do not simply go out onto the street with a camera; they construct a dialectic nature, and as a result its importance in contemporary art. Zang Huan’s work is between the maker and the subject of their works, bringing a dense narrative structured in series in which they recreate constructed scenes. They are mostly weight into their photographs. This is visible in how they are presented and in social portraits, often resulting from his performances. the subject matter, which seeks to be familiar and sometimes everyday, but also For some artists, such as Thomas Ruff, Irving Penn and Eurico Lino do Vale, emotionally ambiguous. photography is a fundamentally ideal medium for recreating what is on the João Tabarra’s works try to recreate the experience of a certain way of looking, surface, rather than what lies beneath it. In that sense, their portraits have no bringing the viewer into a universe that is new each time and is neither reality nor psychological pretense whatsoever. On the contrary, they are conceived with fiction, but rather the reality of a vision. Other photographers use adolescents as a certain uniformity. Ruff specifically avoids the effects that add drama to an actresses for certain roles, creating situations and spaces in which the dramas object, working in a context of neutral and uniform lighting that introduces no take place. These can be the relative solitude of a forest or the limits of a city. rhetorical elements or factors that would alter the presence of the object he sets Closer to a type of reality than what is seen in films, their photos are experiments out to portray. This neutrality brings out the chosen object, distinguishing it from between the limits of photography and film. In Thomas Demand’s case, the pho- its context and endowing it with an autonomous presence. tographer becomes the set designer, constructing a reality that leaves the viewer Pierre Gonnord argues that he selects his contemporaries in the anonymity wondering if he or she is seeing reality or fiction. His works symbolise the way of the large cities, because, beneath the skin, their faces tell singular and as- in which the viewer’s experience and knowledge influence their appreciation of tonishing stories about our time, portraying social realities. Events like 9/11 led space and time. Andres Serrano to show the world what his country means to him. Through the Artists ask themselves how they can recount reality through an artistic form, America series, he approaches the great diversity of the United States’ citizens. and they do so more in visual terms than in didactic ones. In fact, the turning The series shows characters and professions whose monumental representa- point for this type of representation is the ambiguity that is visible in all such tion, transcendental air and halo of diffused sacredness remind us of a gallery work – images that draw away from reality through the construction of meticu- of martyrs and saints. lous staging that is then registered with the camera. That is how they develop

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very personal stories drawn from their deepest self with the sole intention of fos- tering enigmas (examples are artists like Matthew Barney, Roni Horn, Rui Calçada Bastos, João Penalva, João Louro and Miguel Soares). Subjects such as performances have an important place in the work of Gilbert & George and Joana Pimentel when they narrate stories that have extended the photographic image into space. Bleda and Rosa’s photographs maintain their inner meaning in the marks that remain in spaces that have been lived in and experienced. What is perceptible is simply a part of the story, a mark on the fabric of memory. Text and image create new levels of meaning in the work of Sophie Calle and also that of Duane Michals. The latter is interested in the narrative capacity of photographs, and his language combines unique images with portraits of artists that have faced Michals’ lens from their own intimacy. His now classic sequences, micro-narrations accompanied by his texts, bring a poetic character to the everyday quality of the images, creating stories in which paradox irremediably accompanies the viewer’s last look at the work.

5. Society and Urban Life In recent years, it has become clear that today’s artists specifically reflect the conditions under which we perceive the most immediate realities. Their portraits are a summary of the people they encounter on the streets. Some pose, others are caught by the camera barely realising they are being captured. At first glance, this mixture of images may seem chaotic and meaningless, but it is a reflection of daily life, in which multiple actions are occurring around us, although only a few actually register in our memory This is the case in work by artists like Dan Graham, Robert Frank and Hans-Peter Feldman. Jeff Wall says that images need drama and, to a certain degree, ambiguity, implying that a snapshot is not enough. His photographs sometimes look like spontaneous shots, as if they were capturing something unforeseen, which is not the case. The people being photographed are professional models, not people stumbled upon by chance, and the situations captured are not casual. They are the result of careful staging that is repeatedly rehearsed until the perfect shot is achieved. Wall composes his images, making his characters pose according to a story that generally has various levels, running from simple anecdotes to a more complex reflection on our existence.

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very personal stories drawn from their deepest self with the sole intention of fos- William Eggleston uses colour as a natural form of expression, that is, as an tering enigmas (examples are artists like Matthew Barney, Roni Horn, Rui Calçada integral part of the visible world of all we know. In his work colour is the aesthetic Bastos, João Penalva, João Louro and Miguel Soares). force that directs things, it is something important and basic that remained hid- Subjects such as performances have an important place in the work of Gilbert den in black and white photographs and that is essential. Eggleston’s work seems & George and Joana Pimentel when they narrate stories that have extended the to be dedicated to political and social commentary. His photographs allow us to photographic image into space. Bleda and Rosa’s photographs maintain their look into the private world of artists: streets, houses, gardens and indoor scenes, inner meaning in the marks that remain in spaces that have been lived in and and their connection with nature. Colour photography would look totally different experienced. What is perceptible is simply a part of the story, a mark on the fabric today if Eggleston had not existed. With his strangely composed photos of com- of memory. mon situations he created a language with which he has documented life over the Text and image create new levels of meaning in the work of Sophie Calle and last 50 years. In his work he seems to want to establish a connection between the also that of Duane Michals. The latter is interested in the narrative capacity of banality of something extraordinary and the extraordinary qualities of the banal. photographs, and his language combines unique images with portraits of artists In their images, Pedro Letria and Margarita Gouveia deal with work in the that have faced Michals’ lens from their own intimacy. His now classic sequences, city, the society that lives there, the panorama and reinvented spaces, and the micro-narrations accompanied by his texts, bring a poetic character to the daily experience of people who come to a city every day. In their work, Gérard everyday quality of the images, creating stories in which paradox irremediably Castello-Lopes and Paulo Nozolino make an effort to recover a critical gaze and accompanies the viewer’s last look at the work. a concern for the stage that surrounds us and, indisputably, for its homogenisa- tion in cities that are in a state of constant change and reorganisation. Allan Sekula’s work reflects the complexity of the urban experience, oscillating 5. Society and Urban Life between globalisation and individuality. Demolition and relocation have been the In recent years, it has become clear that today’s artists specifically reflect the conditions for urban modernisation and many photographers point out the marks conditions under which we perceive the most immediate realities. Their portraits of a present that is disappearing. are a summary of the people they encounter on the streets. Some pose, others Urban and conceptual research and behaviours that relates to this issue have are caught by the camera barely realising they are being captured. At first glance, been carried out by for instance Cecília Costa and Filipa César. this mixture of images may seem chaotic and meaningless, but it is a reflection For years, Nan Goldin has been portraying people close to her as a sort of of daily life, in which multiple actions are occurring around us, although only biography, in which she feels the need for involvement with the person being a few actually register in our memory This is the case in work by artists like Dan portrayed. One of her main characteristics is the portrayal of the same individu- Graham, Robert Frank and Hans-Peter Feldman. als over the years, as continuity is the only manner in which she believes she can Jeff Wall says that images need drama and, to a certain degree, ambiguity, entirely reflect their characters, making her work into a narrative and construct- implying that a snapshot is not enough. His photographs sometimes look like ing a diary of urban depths. spontaneous shots, as if they were capturing something unforeseen, which is not Philip-Lorca diCorcia believes that a photograph should be ‘an analogy of reality, the case. The people being photographed are professional models, not people not its mirror’. Some artists work with metaphors, while others turn realities into stumbled upon by chance, and the situations captured are not casual. They are fiction, but for Lorca diCorcia, the fundamental idea is not having to wait for a deci- the result of careful staging that is repeatedly rehearsed until the perfect shot sive moment on the street. Such moments can be created, just as filmmakers do. is achieved. Wall composes his images, making his characters pose according The work by Nikki S. Lee and André Príncipe deals with the drastic changes in to a story that generally has various levels, running from simple anecdotes to our contemporary surroundings, the disappearance of traditional horizons and life- a more complex reflection on our existence. styles, the growth of postmodern cities and new urban cultures. Nowadays, these

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conditions have led to growing alienation between the city and its inhabitants, as there are no connections between them, as Susan Meiselas’ work shows. Representing nature and society is at the root of Miguel Rio Branco’s, Edgar Martins’ and Stephen Shore’s images. Many of them lead the audience to medi- tate on the apparent beauty and serenity of the urban landscape, while others offer a vision of the emotional states of people and their everyday lives. Daniel Blaufuks, for instance, photographs everything that happens on the street, regis- tering all kinds of incidents, most of which are ephemeral. No one looks directly into the camera’s lens, they do not let us into their lives, but we are present inside other worlds. Nothing is further from reality than the frozen instant of a photograph, and yet nothing is further from staging than immobility. Thus, photography becomes a screen for ﬁction and imagination, as occurs in the work by Paul Pfeiffer and Mitch Epstein. Thomas Struth says that he seeks to analyse how artworks survive in museums, how they stay alive and how people can build a bridge through time that links them to what the artists want to say. Struth thinks that people should use art as a vital experience – to enjoy and to comfort themselves – to locate themselves in the ﬂow of time.

6. Concepts, Ideas and Criticism The growing importance of new media and the criticism of globalised communication are reflected in Martha Rosler’s work. It is no coincidence that the work of many contemporary artists uses and refers to the media and its strategies for posing questions that affect our present, such as appropriation, authorship (Sherrie Levine), infiltration and the redefinition of television formats, film references and the language of publicity (Douglas Gordon). What concerns us is no longer the manner in which communication media are present in our lives, but the manner in which they construct and define reality with the help of photography (Richard Prince). Tracey Moffat’s work is constantly laced with a ‘tense calm’ that questions social, racial, sexual and political conflicts. Barbara Kruger builds her images through the appropriation and montage of found photographs. Her work func- tions as a counter to the popular culture of publicity, trying to elevate the viewer’s awareness as spectator. In Cindy Sherman’s work, criticism rests with the subtle but defined arti- fice and variety of her self-presentation as well as the careful use of gesture,

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conditions have led to growing alienation between the city and its inhabitants, expression, make-up, clothing, set design, lighting and framing. The artist dis- as there are no connections between them, as Susan Meiselas’ work shows. guises herself as a fictional character, or turns herself into a symbolic image. Representing nature and society is at the root of Miguel Rio Branco’s, Edgar John Baldessari on the other hand is one of the protagonists of conceptual Martins’ and Stephen Shore’s images. Many of them lead the audience to medi- photography. His goal has always been to eliminate the established limits be- tate on the apparent beauty and serenity of the urban landscape, while others tween painting and photography. His work combines black and white photography offer a vision of the emotional states of people and their everyday lives. Daniel with sections of colour. In applying this method, he eliminates information from Blaufuks, for instance, photographs everything that happens on the street, regis- the photograph, placing the emphasis on the space between images and their tering all kinds of incidents, most of which are ephemeral. No one looks directly residues. Baldessari uses his own photographs, stills from B movies, portraits, into the camera’s lens, they do not let us into their lives, but we are present inside snapshots and advertisements, all of which he sees as reflections of our reality. other worlds. Nothing is further from reality than the frozen instant of a photo- In Helena Almeida we find a creative impulse capable of deconstructing graph, and yet nothing is further from staging than immobility. Thus, photogra- the traditional and classical unity of space, time and action. By photographing phy becomes a screen for fiction and imagination, as occurs in the work by Paul decontextualised artworks, Louise Lawler questions that the analytical dimen- Pfeiffer and Mitch Epstein. sion is never an end unto itself, but is filled with ironic ambivalence. Thomas Struth says that he seeks to analyse how artworks survive in museums, how they stay alive and how people can build a bridge through time that links them to what the artists want to say. Struth thinks that people should use 7. Spaces, Places and Objects art as a vital experience – to enjoy and to comfort themselves – to locate them- The accumulation and ordering of all sorts of tools in order to construct visually selves in the flow of time. powerful shapes in which the functionality or traditional use of objects partially loses its role is characteristic of the work by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Thomas Ruff and Carlos Lobo. Duarte Amaral Netto’s images are ruled by the poetics of the 6. Concepts, Ideas and Criticism encounter with something simple and lean that nevertheless constitutes a very The growing importance of new media and the criticism of globalised communi- special way of seeing and understanding the reality that surrounds us. cation are reflected in Martha Rosler’s work. It is no coincidence that the work Andreas Gursky, in turn, is most interested in the phenomenon of mass culture. of many contemporary artists uses and refers to the media and its strategies With a distant sobriety, he photographs commercial places and spaces. His work for posing questions that affect our present, such as appropriation, authorship on the Dior store is a photographic investigation that focuses on the silent life of (Sherrie Levine), infiltration and the redefinition of television formats, film refer- objects and their use in the marketplace. Ricarda Roggan and Pertti Kekarainen ences and the language of publicity (Douglas Gordon). What concerns us is no document spaces from one or diverse angles, using their photographs to ap- longer the manner in which communication media are present in our lives, but proach the manner in which memory and knowledge influence space and how the manner in which they construct and define reality with the help of photogra- viewers take it in. phy (Richard Prince). Ignasi Aballí recovers conceptual practices based on an intense reflection Tracey Moffat’s work is constantly laced with a ‘tense calm’ that questions about the status of the image, painting, representation, and even the political social, racial, sexual and political conflicts. Barbara Kruger builds her images condition of art in his works. The photographs of Uta Barth and Sabine Hornig through the appropriation and montage of found photographs. Her work func- in turn eschew reflecting obvious evidence leading to obvious conclusions. Their tions as a counter to the popular culture of publicity, trying to elevate the viewer’s work turns reality into abstraction, with enigmatic, beautiful, open and impen- awareness as spectator. etrable images. Christopher Williams uses photography as a support for a con- In Cindy Sherman’s work, criticism rests with the subtle but defined arti- ceptual work that explores the nature of the image and the elements that shape fice and variety of her self-presentation as well as the careful use of gesture, it in today’s historical and cultural context.

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The work by sisters Jane and Louise Wilson is neither static nor one-dimensional. They have been working together for over ﬁfteen years and have adopted an artistic position that is visually provocative and intellectually stimulating. Exploring the relations between property, politics and power, the friction between macro and micro, and the stories of powerful architectural structures, their works are icons of the ambivalence of our contemporary experience, hovering between documentary and constructed narratives. Craigie Horsﬁeld’s photographic intentions were to create an art based not on memory, but on existence, to establish a practice that lies beyond documentary or pictorial photography. In the realism of his works, the passage of time is the most present component that can be grasped in his dark tonalities and dramatic chiaroscuro.

8. Architectures Photography and architecture are two forms of aesthetic expression that seek to motivate the perception of those who contemplate them. The works presented here show that, like any document, architecture bases its meaning as much on its author as on its translators, in this case the photographers. Bernd and Hilla Becher speak to us of something beyond the structures represented in their photographs; they speak of modernity, historical memory, the past and the present. Their work is metaphorical, poetic and visionary. In Thomas Struth’s photographs architecture and urban design bear witness to the socio-economic and cultural conditions of the place. They have an objective and pathos-free appearance in which a reading of the image is implied. It can be analysed formally or metaphorically. The neutral tone is not due to an absence of intervention; it is the occasion to say something about the image without imposing a singular language. His images, defined by the motive and not by the moment, are quite close to paintings. Stan Douglas revisits places with strong historical significance that have been transformed or whose use has been altered by the passage of time, social necessities or political action. In contrast, Candida Höfer photographs spaces, specifically, public spaces or semi-public interiors – images of libraries, exhibition halls and museums, universities, churches and banks. They do not present perspectives that establish a direct relation with the outside world, and they are customarily uninhabited.

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The work by sisters Jane and Louise Wilson is neither static nor one-dimen- In his photographs, José Manuel Ballester represents architectural elements sional. They have been working together for over fifteen years and have adopted and spaces that challenge the limits of our perception of reality. His work focuses an artistic position that is visually provocative and intellectually stimulating. on a reflection about the non-place as a characteristic space in our time. The Exploring the relations between property, politics and power, the friction between passage of time and the presence of the human mark on different settings are macro and micro, and the stories of powerful architectural structures, their works the essence of André Cepeda’s work. are icons of the ambivalence of our contemporary experience, hovering between In the series by Hannah Collins presented in the exhibition, the city is con- documentary and constructed narratives. templated from above, the ethereal space becomes colour and shares the com- Craigie Horsfield’s photographic intentions were to create an art based not position of the most rigid structure of the urban layout. Placing the vantage point on memory, but on existence, to establish a practice that lies beyond documen- at a height separates it from the vicissitudes of the pedestrians, allowing them tary or pictorial photography. In the realism of his works, the passage of time to contemplate dynamic and optimistic views. The images capture the essence of is the most present component that can be grasped in his dark tonalities and the city, its space and its time. Luís Palma’s lens captures humanity’s manipula- dramatic chiaroscuro. tion of landscape, the city and the urban setting, portraying diverse aspects of the city as human habitat and the urban setting as a context in which to live. Thomas Ruff’s interest in the inherent superficiality of photography can also 8. Architectures be found in his work on architecture: a series of shots of post-war buildings in Photography and architecture are two forms of aesthetic expression that seek to which some of the images have been altered digitally to guarantee total absence motivate the perception of those who contemplate them. The works presented of any visual interest, eliminating a tree, a traffic sign or the entry door. Ruff thus here show that, like any document, architecture bases its meaning as much on transforms his own surroundings into the subject of his photographic research its author as on its translators, in this case the photographers. Bernd and Hilla with a series of very different images. Becher speak to us of something beyond the structures represented in their photographs; they speak of modernity, historical memory, the past and the present. Their work is metaphorical, poetic and visionary. In this exhibition, the works share our gaze, in very different registers, and each In Thomas Struth’s photographs architecture and urban design bear witness to of us can suppose without much chance of error, that our receptivity will not be the socio-economic and cultural conditions of the place. They have an objective uniform, because each of us has our own sensitivity and because not all artists and pathos-free appearance in which a reading of the image is implied. It can be use the technique of photography with the same goals. analysed formally or metaphorically. The neutral tone is not due to an absence of In curating this exhibition and selecting the photographs for it, our work is also intervention; it is the occasion to say something about the image without impos- an exercise in subjectivity, and therefore, we want the viewers to make their own, ing a singular language. His images, defined by the motive and not by the mo- unarguable, judgements. ment, are quite close to paintings. We are very aware that we are creating a kind of fiction, even though it is based Stan Douglas revisits places with strong historical significance that have on the reality of the Banco Espirito Santo’s photography collection. In sum, we been transformed or whose use has been altered by the passage of time, social would like to share this opportunity to travel the world through these images with necessities or political action. In contrast, Candida Höfer photographs spaces, all its visitors. specifically, public spaces or semi-public interiors – images of libraries, exhibition halls and museums, universities, churches and banks. They do not present perspectives that establish a direct relation with the outside world, and they are customarily uninhabited.

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Ignasi Aballí

Ignasi Aballí (1958, Barcelona, Spain) belongs to a generation of artists who, since the end of the 1980s, has recovered the reflection of conceptual practices about the status of the image and of representation, dedicating special attention to photography and painting. His work has therefore developed through the possibilities provided by these two artistic media, constantly testing his limits of understanding and perception and turning minimal elements, fragments, residues, into the subject (and result) of his research. The purpose is to explore materials and processes, but also the paradigms associated to contemporary artistic creation, thus selecting as his main subjects notions of absence, disappearance and simulation. That is the case in the iconic series Reflexió [reflection] (2006), developed by Aballí since 2000 and which encompasses a set of photographs depicting reflections of different works (drawings, paintings, photographs), by different authors captured in exhibition contexts. And, as in his own exhibitions, they have titles with a crucial semantic relevance: Desapariciones (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2002), Nada-para-ver (Museo de Bellas Artes de Santander, Santander, 2004) or Sem Actividade (Museu de Portimão, Portimão, 2008). The overall title of this series points to its essential problems: ‘reflection’ as a thought, but also as an effect, which visibly reflects something, giving it another type of visibility – a mediated visibility. Aballí provides a distorted, irregular and partial image of the works, which are presented here as if in a game of mirrors. He dissolves them with the exhibition space, the starting point, and makes them into another reality which, in turn, is reconfigured in his own pictorial and photographic reflections. Without defini- tive limits, these are works in which temporality is simultaneously dissected and rebuilt, demanding a perceptive evolution from the viewer.

Lúcia Marques

Selected bibliography Ignasi Aballí. 0-24H, Museu D’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, 2006.

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Ignasi Aballí

Lúcia Marques

Selected bibliography Ignasi Aballí. 0-24H, Museu D’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, 2006.

Reﬂexió XXIII, 2006 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 125.5 x 193 cm · Unique print Reﬂexió XXVII, 2006 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 125.5 x 193 cm · Unique print

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Vito Acconci

The North American artist Vito Acconci’s (1940, New York, NY, USA) career, which took off in the 1960s, has followed quite an unusual path. Initially associated with poetry, he later moved on to performance, defining a flexible area between words and actions that would lead to a special interest in public space and its relation with subjectivity. At first Acconci’s interventions arose from an extension of his poetic relationship with living spaces that became the contexts for his performances in which he tried to find the specificity of the subject’s relation – either the artist’s or the viewer’s – with the surrounding public space, or, to be precise, with the exhibition space. One of his most relevant works is Seedbed (1971). This performance, which was staged at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York, involved the installation of a large ramp in the gallery. The artist, hidden from the audience underneath the ramp, would masturbate while recounting, in his deep rough voice, his fantasies about that very same public. The notion that the tool for any intervention in public space is directly related to the architectural space was already present here. In fact, the construction of structures and architectural interventions that deal with the role of the viewer, who is poignantly confronted with the public dimension of their own status, crystallised itself as an extension of his artistic practice. Acconci’s work with interventions led him to the use of photography in the wake of many other artists who, during that period, opted for more ephemeral media, often connected to their own bodies, as a means to create work. Photography became a fixture of his ephemeral artistic interventions, but in that process, an ontological transformation also occurred. The photograph’s function changed from document to work, taking on an ambiguous and complex status, which resulted from the need to use the photographs as a narrative tool, enabling us to remember the events in a way that came close to the actual performance. The work included in this collection is derived from a recent project in which photography is combined with text to create a work that references the events of 9/11 2001. In fact, the work is a proposal for an intervention at the World Trade Center, in which an organic and permeable building appears. The image, showing visuals and text intertwined – a combination similar to the artist’s documenta- tion of performances in the 1970s – shows an unavoidable synthesis between strange circular shape and the nature of the architectural simulations that represent the project’s essence. A particular understanding of the relation between art and social and public space is thus defined.

Delﬁm Sardo

Selected bibliography Vito Hannibal Acconci Studio, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, 2004. Gregory Volk, Vito Acconci. Diary of a Body 1969-1973, Charta, Milan, 2004. Gloria Moure (ed.), Vito Acconci, Ediciones Polígrafa, Barcelona, 2001. Tom Finckelpearl, Dialogues in Public Art, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000. Vito Acconci: a Retrospective, 1969-1980, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1980.

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Vito Acconci

Delﬁm Sardo

New World Trade Center, (New York, USA), 2002 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) and handwritten text · Ø 183 cm · Unique print

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Doug Aitken

Always challenging the conventions of linear narrative, Doug Aitken (1968, Redondo Beach, CA, USA) has been using a very varied range of media like photography, but also video and sculpture. His concern with blurring the boundaries manifests itself beyond his artworks: the different catalogues published on his projects contain texts that do not exactly comply with the usual formats used in contemporary art, being closer to stories without a beginning, middle or an end. The artist writes these texts himself and he has even published a series of in- terviews with other artists. Likewise, those conversations do not have a singular interpretation of any career or practice in particular. Doug Aitken believes that when editing images there is a possible transposition of the complexity of our contemporary relation to new visual manifestations determined by new technologies and recently developed options of transmitting and dislocating information. That is why he is never concerned with the single image but rather with its interaction: references to industrial landscapes and means of transportation are a constant in his work – the amount of aeroplanes, electrical cables and antennae is remarkable. This focus on images that are eminently contemporary, together with a disbelief in singular and linear interpretations, makes the artist frequently opt for complex installations. A forcibly fragmentary experience in generated by the viewer travelling throughout the space, consciously editing images and comprehending time, and its passing, in a new way. When faced with multiple video projections or incredibly demanding light installations, for instance, the results are moments of perceptive disorienta- tion, which replicate, by highlighting them, feelings that are constantly provided by life in a large metropolis. Aitken’s work was awarded the Golden Lion at the 1999 Venice Biennial. In 2000 he also won the Aldrich Award.

Ricardo Nicolau

Selected bibliography A-Z Book (Fractals), Hatje Cantz, Osﬁldern, 2002. New Ocean, Walther König, Cologne, 2002. Notes for New Religions. Notes for no Religions, Hatje Cantz, Ostﬁldern, 2001.

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Doug Aitken

Ricardo Nicolau

Selected bibliography A-Z Book (Fractals), Hatje Cantz, Osﬁldern, 2002. New Ocean, Walther König, Cologne, 2002. Notes for New Religions. Notes for no Religions, Hatje Cantz, Ostﬁldern, 2001.

here to go (ice cave), 2002 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) mounted on aluminium · Ø 183 · Edition 5/6

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nighttrain, 2004 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) mounted on aluminium · 96.52 x 200.44 cm · Edition 3/6

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nighttrain, 2004 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) mounted on aluminium · 96.52 x 200.44 cm · Edition 3/6

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Gabriela Albergaria

In the French novel Paul et Virginie,1 Virginie sends European seeds to Paul who 1 Paul et Virginie, 1787, Bernardin is living on the islands of Mauritius. The seeds fail to grow, a sign that it was dif- de Saint Pierre. The author was a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ficult to adapt from the culture of the old continent to the ‘good savage’ island. traveller and botanist. The issues of rooting and transplantation in a nature subjected to cultural produc- 2 Araucária Angustifolia, her project tions are the core of Gabriela Albergaria’s (1965, Vale de Cambra, Portugal) work. exhibited at Galeria Vermelho (São Paulo, September 2007), explored In that sense, the artist’s work embodies the contradictions of contemporary the transposition of tropical plants life: between country and city, in her teens, and currently between Lisbon and into the Buçaco Garden (Portugal). Berlin, but also between Portugal and Brazil.2 Historically, it is the opposition 3 The artist’s relation with France was maintained through the book between the country and the city as referred to by Eça de Queiroz, but on a Herbes Folles, on her experience European level, also its current transposition between ecology and nature’s with Parisian gardens and via aesthetic-exotic consumption policy. This ambivalence can be found in the her residency at Villa Arson, Nice (September 2008). diversified use of a range media. Perfect examples of this nature are the works presented here, that comprise associations between drawing and photography: Parc Monceau #71 and Parc Monceau #73 (2006). Gabriela Albergaria consolidated the first stage in her production in 2000, when she included a photographic set created with green spatial models made by the artist in the group exhibition Mnemosyne, in Coimbra. At that time, photography was for Albergaria a way of manipulating a fundamental memory, through framing and an intentional use of artificial lighting. The construction of models was also a preparatory stage in relation to what was to become an essential element of her work: the imagined natural space was created as a fictional garden according to a theory affected by the great political movements. The works presented here were created during a pivotal moment in the artist’s life, after her solo exhibition at Centro de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra, in 2005. Living at the Cité des Arts in Paris, Gabriela Albergaria created research booklets on the city’s gardens (such as Parc Monceau), with photographs serving as the basis for drawings.3 Progressively, the booklets led her historical research towards an aesthetic production that links the photographed image with the drawing. Progressively the entire story moves towards the present, thus revealing in a simple visual way the complexity of the relationship between man and the world that surrounds him through the artist’s productions of ‘almost’ natural spaces.

Joana Neves

Selected bibliography Joana Neves, Herbes Folles, ADIAC, Lisbon, 2007. Gabriela Albergaria, Mouvement Instability Conﬂito + Projectos/Projects 2003-2005, Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra, Coimbra, 2005. Reconhecer – Um lugar, Ah, Galeria de Arte Contemporânea, Viseu, 2004. Henrikke Nielsen, ‘Rebuilding the Mechanisms of Feelings or How to Give Shape to a Tempest’, in Imago 2002, Encuentros de Fotografía y Vídeo, Salamanca, 2002. Gabriela Albergaria 2000/2001, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2001.

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Gabriela Albergaria

Joana Neves

parc monceau #71, 2006 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) and green pencil · 2 x (35 x 100 cm) · Unique print parc monceau #73, 2006 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) and green pencil · 2 x (35 x 100 cm) · Unique print

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Helena Almeida

Helena Almeida (1934, Lisbon, Portugal) moved from drawing to pho- 1 Helena Almeida interviewed tography and adopted video as a way of imagining photographs. It was by Helena Vasconcelos, Storm magazine, 2005, www.storm- her series of horsehair collages that led her to photography by the end magazine.com. of the 1960s. She wanted to touch the horsehair with her fingers to 2 Isabel Carlos, in Intus – Helena evidence the materiality of the line inscribed on the paper. In 1969 she Almeida, Instituto das Artes / Civilização Editora, Lisbon, 2005. was photographed for the first time with a pink cloth over her breast. The photograph was taken by her husband, the architect and sculptor Artur Rosa, who from that moment on became permanently associated with her work. Almeida moved from performance to photography, echoing a singular voice in Portuguese contemporary art. Although working with her own body, Helena Almeida has always kept her distance from an exclusively feminist interpretation of her work. ‘I see myself and I see other colleagues without considering a feminine or masculine gender, rather, I see them with a hermaph- rodite sensitivity. I find the same sophistication, mystery, violence, purity in men.’1 In the series Tela Habitada [inhabited canvas] (1976) Almeida becomes an angel behind a white veil, a metaphor for the body. The series Eu estou aqui [I am here] was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2005, in which the artist represented Portugal. The artist is on the floor, on her knees, as always dressed in black, thanking an imaginary applaud- ing audience. Movements that are ‘almost gift-like, as if a sacrificed lamb offered to the audience’, as underlined by Isabel Carlos, commis- sioner of the exhibition, but these movements also ‘show some irony regarding these altars [the biennale exhibitions] of contemporary art’.2 The colours used in the series against a black and white photographic background are always red and blue. ‘I had to use these colours and not others – the blue relates to space and the red to weight and luxury.’

Jean-François Chougnet

Selected bibliography Isabel Carlos, Helena Almeida, Editorial Caminho, Lisbon, 2006. Joana Ascensão, Pintura Habitada, DVD, 50’, Midas – DocLisboa, Lisbon, 2006. Intus – Helena Almeida, Instituto das Artes/Civilização Editora, Lisbon, 2005. Pés no Chão, Cabeça no Céu, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, 2004. Helena Almeida, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, 2000.

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Helena Almeida

Jean-François Chougnet

Tela Habitada, 1977 Gelatin silver print on RC paper and acrylic paint · 12 x (29.5 x 39.5 cm) · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 38 22/12/08 12:41:42 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 39 22/12/08 12:41:44 40 BESART / HELENA ALMEIDA

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 40 22/12/08 12:41:55 40 BESART / HELENA ALMEIDA 41 BESART / HELENA ALMEIDA

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 40 22/12/08 12:41:55 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 41 22/12/08 12:42:04 42 BESART / HELENA ALMEIDA

Eu estou aqui #1, 2005 Gelatin silver print on RC paper · 130 x 130 cm · Unique print Eu estou aqui #3, 2005 Gelatin silver print on RC paper · 130 x 95 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 42 22/12/08 12:42:05 42 BESART / HELENA ALMEIDA 43 BESART / HELENA ALMEIDA

Eu estou aqui #1, 2005 Gelatin silver print on RC paper · 130 x 130 cm · Unique print Eu estou aqui #3, 2005 Gelatin silver print on RC paper · 130 x 95 cm · Unique print Eu estou aqui #2, 2005 Gelatin silver print on RC paper and acrylic paint · 130 x 105 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 42 22/12/08 12:42:05 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 43 22/12/08 12:42:06 44 BESART / AUGUSTO ALVES DA SILVA

Augusto Alves da Silva

Augusto Alves da Silva (1963, Lisbon, Portugal) is one of the most representative photographers of the 1990s generation in Portugal (in 1998 he was selected for the Citybank Photography Award in the United Kingdom) using the various conceptual strategies of his time. His projects have defined some of the characteristics that help to distinguish his works: the proper use of the various records and means of visual art (video, audio, analogue photographs in colour or in black and white) and an unmistakable tendency for movement that suspends limits. In his photographs or videos time always determines sense – the coincidence between the suspended moment of our view and observation, or the manipulation of time by the video operator, the circular psychological time of So far, so good (Lisbon 96) (1996), or the dramatically suspended time by the word cut. The three images of the Shelter (1999) series already reveal a look that is caught by the distant perspective represented by Land Art: an echo of geographical surveys like New Topographics and the choreographed prints of the great spaces briefly changed by man. The ethnical notes of cultural survival, gathered in this search, appear in a metaphorical and ironic manner in Alves da Silva’s mountain shelter. We find the same approach, informed by its times and already foreseeing the current affinity with landscape photography, seized by the ‘look of God’, in various images that are part of his project for the Canary Islands Government, La Gomera (2003). It is an extended series of images without memory, which also impresses in an atmospheric sense of place and the limits of feeling time. In other series such as Uma Cidade Assim [a city like this] (1996) or Trade (2001), the view appears to us as being staged, fragmented or suggesting a scenic framework (as in CNB, 2001). The three photographs of the Die Schönste Fahne der Welt [the most beautiful flag in the world] series (2006) are inserted into the moment of the cut. Here the images are subjected to an aestheticised view that was updated by conceptualism by using the spirit of photojournalism, therefore answering to a current reception theory without ignoring the justifica- tions of its conception.

Maria do Carmo Serén

Selected bibliography Augusto Alves da Silva. Espaço de Tempo, Museu do Chiado – Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon, 2002. Shelter, IST Press, Lisbon, 2001. Uma Cidade Assim, Câmara Municipal de Matosinhos, Matosinhos, 1996. IST, IST Press, Lisbon, 1995. Algés-Trafaria, 1990, Ether/Urbe, Lisbon, 1990.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 44 22/12/08 12:42:06 44 BESART / AUGUSTO ALVES DA SILVA 45 BESART / AUGUSTO ALVES DA SILVA

Augusto Alves da Silva

Maria do Carmo Serén

Untitled #11, from the series Shelter, 1999 Silver Dye Bleach Print (Ilfochrome) · 41 x 50 cm · Edition 1/3 Untitled #14, from the series Shelter, 1999 Silver Dye Bleach Print (Ilfochrome) · 41 x 50 cm · Edition 1/3 Untitled #20, from the series Shelter, 1999 Silver Dye Bleach Print (Ilfochrome) · 41 x 50 cm · Edition 1/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 44 22/12/08 12:42:06 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 45 22/12/08 12:42:10 46 BESART / DUARTE AMARAL NETTO

Duarte Amaral Netto

Duarte Amaral Netto (1976, Lisbon, Portugal) selects contexts he is faced with and uses them as sets for meticulously staged representations at a later moment. Approximation and distance are important elements in his working method. The composition of the set, prior to shooting, is a process of summation – by adding elements that were not part of the set initially, but mostly by the omission of objects that are not of interest to the artist. The photographer carefully controls what he wants to show in an operation close to an act of painting. A psychological atmosphere caused by a suspension in time is assigned to common moments of daily life. Those pictured are young people of his generation, from his circle of friends and family. The distancing with regards to any emotions is matched by a distancing perspective of the camera in relation to the subject. The viewer is not part of the action – but is invited to let their attention linger on the images to uncover the plot. The images Marilyn and Horóscopo [horoscope] refer to domestic scenes, marked by the space between the characters, a factor that enhances a feeling of anticipation. Marilyn is, according to the artist, a scene of seduction. The photographer allows for the viewer to see it, but only from a distance. The triangle created by the characters is crowned by an iconic still from the ﬁlm The Seven Year Itch, in which the actress is the symbol of sensuality. In Horóscopo, in a world in which all its elements are aligned and organised (including teapots, knives, chairs, cabinets, the geometric tiles), human nature stands out as an element of instability and disorder. Duarte Amaral Netto has had regular exhibitions since 2000. He participated in the photography strand of the Gulbenkian Programme for Creativity and Artistic Creation in 2005. He was awarded the great prize at the 48eme Salon de Montrouge in 2003.

Luísa Especial

Selected bibliography Delﬁm Sardo, ‘Marilyn’, in Expresso (Actual), 2008. www.duartenetto.com

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 46 22/12/08 12:42:10 46 BESART / DUARTE AMARAL NETTO 47 BESART / DUARTE AMARAL NETTO

Duarte Amaral Netto

Luísa Especial

Selected bibliography Delﬁm Sardo, ‘Marilyn’, in Expresso (Actual), 2008. www.duartenetto.com

Horóscopo, 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 126 x 156 cm · Edition 1/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 46 22/12/08 12:42:10 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 47 22/12/08 12:42:11 48 BESART / DUARTE AMARAL NETTO

Duarte Amaral Netto Marilyn, 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 75 x 201 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 48 22/12/08 12:42:16 48 BESART / DUARTE AMARAL NETTO 49 BESART / DIETER APPELT

Dieter Appelt

At first sight, Canto II (1991) and Wiesent-Cinema (2001) have nothing in common. They are both black and white analogue photographs, one of them clearly showing an image of extreme sharpness representing part of the artist’s face, the other leaving us with a question, as we are faced with not easily identifiable abstract forms. For Dieter Appelt (1935, Niemegk, Germany), the purpose of this art form is not what it has been since its invention, meaning it is not to represent reality as it is but rather to express a sense of continuity. The fixed moment that we see in the image does not exist, because reality is in constant transformation. Appelt’s work involves us in the natural cycle of disappearance and renewal of life. This sense of continuity, which is essential in the artist’s œuvre, is expressed in two different ways. In Canto II through a series of images and in Wiesent-Cinema through images juxtaposed within the same print. Appelt also suggests that we seize the truth of time passed. The image of the thumb in the mouth is his way of showing us that our knowledge of the world is not only conveyed through words, but also through body language. Similarly, nature invites us to apprehend the world in the same way, water being one of the natural elements that particularly attracts and fascinates the artist. The movement of running water, always seemingly the same but different at the same time, invites us towards an emotive and poetic understanding of our world. Appelt lives and works in Berlin. His study of music at the Leipzig Academy, and his career as a baritone soloist at the opera were as formative for his becom- ing an artist as his studies at the School of Fine Arts in Berlin. Towards the end of the 1970s, he decided to devote himself to the study of the image. Since he was invited to teach at Berlin’s University of Art in 1982, he has not interrupted his artistic career. The Art Institute of Chicago, Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, New York’s Guggenheim Museum, Paris’ National Centre of Photography, and more recently the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, have all staged significant solo exhibitions of his work.

Françoise Paviot

Selected bibliography Morts et Resurrections de Dieter Appelt, Herscher, Paris, 1981.

Duarte Amaral Netto Marilyn, 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 75 x 201 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 48 22/12/08 12:42:16 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 49 22/12/08 12:43:38 50 BESART / DIETER APPELT

Dieter Appelt Canto II, 1991 Gelatin silver print · 10 x (46 x 60 cm) · Edition 1/3 Wiesent-Cinema-Still, 2001 Gelatin silver print with multiple exposure · 93 x 115 cm · Edition 1/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 50 22/12/08 12:43:43 50 BESART / DIETER APPELT 51 BESART / VASCO ARAÚJO

Vasco Araújo

Vasco Araújo (1975, Lisbon, Portugal) is one of the most well-known young Portuguese artists in the international art scene, who has exhibited since the late 1990s. His work distinguishes itself by its reflection on staged identity games, sometimes interpreted by the artist himself, often alluding to themes from aca- demic culture, using different media in the same installation. Both works included in this collection are significant examples of his working method, and they are both associated with relevant solo exhibitions recently staged by the artist: Dilema at Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves in Oporto (2004) and at S.M.A.K. in Gent (2005) and O que eu fui at Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon (2006). Dilema (2004) is part of an installation comprised of sixty-four colour photographs framed by oval frames and exhibited in a room painted to evoke the painting section of an ancient art museum. The images populating this formal environment are characterised by the three figures that express the coded language of fandom. Araújo himself appears dressed so as to embody those characters, developing a strategy of performance that is typical for his work. Here he takes a particular interest in the notion of the fan, as an accessory traditionally associated with female seduction codes. By subverting the socially established roles and highlighting (through captions) their meaning once limited to an elite, his provocative attitude explores with precision the boundaries of what is accepted or prohibited, of what can or cannot be said concerning cultural protocols. O que eu fui [what I was] (2006) is also part of an installation in which Araújo uses photography. Here the images are associated with a sound device that allows us to hear the testimony of a dying female, her voice talking about her own life. The ironic analysis of the woman created through sound contrasts with the twenty one images populated by statues that we identify as urban: symbolic milestones that succinctly condense utopias and ideologies about the perfect human being. These two works confirm the interest Araújo’s work has generated through his presence in Biennials like the one in Venice and Moscow in 2005 and in Sydney in 2004. He was nominated for the BES Photo 2006 award, following him duly receiving the EDP Novos Artistas award in 2002.

Lúcia Marques

Selected bibliography John Welchman, Vasco Araújo, ADIAC Portugal, Lisbon, 2007. L’inceste, Museu Nacional do Azulejo, Lisbon, 2005. Vasco Araújo, Comissão Instaladora da Fundação EDP, Lisbon, 2003. La Stupenda, Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon, 2001.

Dieter Appelt Canto II, 1991 Gelatin silver print · 10 x (46 x 60 cm) · Edition 1/3 Wiesent-Cinema-Still, 2001 Gelatin silver print with multiple exposure · 93 x 115 cm · Edition 1/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 50 22/12/08 12:43:43 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 51 22/12/08 12:43:43 52 BESART / VASCO ARAÚJO

Dilema, 2004 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 150 x 250 cm (approx.) · Edition 1/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 52 22/12/08 12:43:50 52 BESART / VASCO ARAÚJO 53 BESART / VASCO ARAÚJO

Dilema, 2004 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 150 x 250 cm (approx.) · Edition 1/3 O que eu fui, 2006 Silver Dye Bleach Print (Ilfochrome) and sound installation · 94 x 139 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 52 22/12/08 12:43:50 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 53 22/12/08 12:43:52 54 BESART / JOHN BALDESSARI

John Baldessari

John Baldessari (1931, National City, CA, USA) is one of the visual artists who have been most influential in the transformation of the status of the photographic image, which took place in the second half of the twentieth century. His works – often ironic combinations of pictures that are derived from both photography and film, partially obliterated and mixed with painting – are the result of an ongoing concern with the relation between fixed and moving images and their relation with painting. Baldessari’s career as an artists started in the 1960s and throughout his extensive body of work he has used different methodologies and media, including painting – probably the most permanent reference in his work – film, photography and video, frequently articulated with text. Although displaying an ironic and often derisory tone, Baldessari’s work shows an immense sophistication in its conceptual processes and in the way it locates itself in art history, showing obvious influences from Matisse and Magritte – the first because of the colour- ing and the use of large fields, and the latter because of the construction of paradoxal images. What has connected his work throughout the last forty years is probably the search for the reason that transforms an image into a work of art. Or, in other words, the mechanisms that make us believe in the veracity of images. As such, Baldessari has created a methodology of composing images derived from film (in all its different genres, from film noir to slapstick movies) into a configuration that is clearly a tribute to the processes of collage as used by early twentieth-century avant-gardists. But it is also, and mainly, a tribute to cinematographic editing and cutting processes. In fact, John Baldessari’s use of the photographic image can be associated with cinema’s stoppage processes, always proposing an ‘out of the frame’ for his composed images which, therefore, question cinema’s diagetic processes – or the notion of the suspension of disbelief in painting. Both works included in this collection are examples of the artist’s recent body of work, evidencing how his images articulate themselves in space as composite maps in which the status of photography itself as element in the composition is questioned.

Delﬁm Sardo

Selected bibliography John Baldessari. A Different Kind of Order (Works 1962-1984), Walther König, Cologne, 2005. John Baldessari, Julião Sarmento, Lawrence Weiner – Drift, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, 2003. Coosje van Bruggen, John Baldessari, Rizzoli, New York, 1990.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 54 22/12/08 12:43:52 54 BESART / JOHN BALDESSARI 55 BESART / JOHN BALDESSARI

John Baldessari

Delﬁm Sardo

Five Yellow Divisions: with Persons (Black and White), 2004 Inkjet prints mounted on Sintra board · 349.25 x 26 x 4.45 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 54 22/12/08 12:43:52 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 55 22/12/08 12:43:53 56 BESART / JOHN BALDESSARI

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 56 22/12/08 12:43:55 56 BESART / JOHN BALDESSARI 57 BESART / JOHN BALDESSARI

Intersection Series: Seascape, Man (with Brick) and Man (with Pencil), 2002 Inkjet prints, mounted on Sintra board · 174.62 x 215.26 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 56 22/12/08 12:43:55 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 57 22/12/08 12:43:55 58 BESART / JOSÉ MANUEL BALLESTER

José Manuel Ballester

José Manuel Ballester’s (1960, Madrid, Spain) silent images detain themselves in desolated, symmetrical, organised architectural spaces. These are areas of transit (hallways or stairwells), large buildings (museums, airports, stations, sta- diums or hospitals) or industrial facilities (factories, workshops or warehouses). The photographs from the series Contenedores belong to this last category and refer to a work from 2005 on the port of Barcelona. The way in which the containers are stacked is similar to the stacking of units in apartment blocks, and therefore, Ballester has created a fictitious skyline. It should be noted that the artist is also a painter and the logic of these images is, because of the com- positions and the use of colour, closer to this medium than to photography. For those who remember the classical 1980s’ videogame Tetris, the colourful way of stacking successive geometrical units is familiar. The structured standardisation of the geometrical forms grants them a unit status. When observed side-by-side Contenedores 7 and 8 work as a diptych: another image, more diffuse, is associated with a clear one that has been derived from its predecessor. The well-defined contours of the grid are out of focus, as if we suddenly saw the image without glasses. This mechanism is close to Composición (2005), in which the object is a bookcase and the standard unit is the book. In Contenedores the absence of any further information in the title, the lead-coloured and indistinct sky and the high standardisation of the shapes prevents us to recognise the specific location of this port landscape. Ballester has had regular exhibitions since 1985. Among his most recent solo exhibitions madrid-berlín, at the Palacio de Comunicaciones de Madrid (2008); Recent works about China, at the Beijing Fine Arts Central Academy (2007) and Habitación 523 at the Velázquez Palace / Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2005) were most notable.

Luísa Especial

Selected bibliography José Manuel Ballester. Habitación 523, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2005. Museos, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia, 2001.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 58 22/12/08 12:43:55 58 BESART / JOSÉ MANUEL BALLESTER 59 BESART / JOSÉ MANUEL BALLESTER

José Manuel Ballester

Luísa Especial

Selected bibliography José Manuel Ballester. Habitación 523, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2005. Museos, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia, 2001.

Contenedores 7, 2005 Digital Chromogenic Print (Process LightJet) on paper Fuji Crystal Archive · 299.2 x 144.6 cm · Edition 1/3 Contenedores 8, 2005 Digital Chromogenic Print (Process LightJet) on paper Fuji Crystal Archive · 298.5 x 144 cm · Edition 1/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 58 22/12/08 12:43:55 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 59 22/12/08 12:44:11 60 BESART / PEDRO BARATEIRO

Pedro Barateiro

Pedro Barateiro (1979, Lisbon, Portugal) regularly uses images from archives or images found in old magazines. In both cases, he works with material that may resonate with examples of modernist architecture: they show military perspectives, either in Portugal or in its former colonies, stills from government ﬁlms, photographs that document social housing projects and government facilities. Different elements stimulate his interest: on the one hand, to understand the po- tential in terms of renovation, the transformation of an actuality that still contains certain social and architectural theories. On the other hand, to denounce how image production is always part of a type of a historically determined narrative. Although we use the word ‘denounce’ it is important to note that Barateiro’s work is far from propaganda-like. It may use images that force us to face our colonial past, while others remind us of radical experiences about how to live in a community. Alternatively he may use the history of modernism to rethink notions of public space. He may oppose the creation of fetishes and the crystallisation of the artistic object promoted by certain institutions, namely museums. He may associate capitalism to real artistic expressions. But all that is always accom- plished by giving particular attention to the possible multiple interpretations of the pieces, and their autonomy in relation to a particular political agenda. When Barateiro started painting over photographs he was interested in contradicting the neutral character of the representations of modernism, associating their rigour with spots and letters distributed in an anarchic way. His approach to the issues raised during that period has a truly critical nature and that is why his use of some synchronic references, from artistic interventions (where Situationism is an important reference), to theoretical reﬂections like those by Henri Lefebvre and Susan Sontag, and poetical texts by people like Clarice Lispector, to rethink urban and social issues – in other words, our relation with the city.

Ricardo Nicolau

Selected bibliography Tom Watt, ‘Those who do not learn how to decipher images will be the illiterate of the future’, in ArtReview, London, June 2008. Susanne Kippenberger, ‘Ein im Grünen Häuschen’, in Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin, 27 April 2008. Pedro Barateiro, Ricardo Valentim, Temporary Collaborations, Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, 2008. Fernando Castro Flórez, ‘Notas de rodapé acerca da obra de Pedro Barateiro’, in Dardo Magazine, Santiago de Compostela, June-September 2007.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 60 22/12/08 12:44:11 60 BESART / PEDRO BARATEIRO 61 BESART / PEDRO BARATEIRO

Pedro Barateiro

Ricardo Nicolau

Late Modernism / Late Capitalism, 2006 Acrylic on Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 127 x 126.5 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 60 22/12/08 12:44:11 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 61 22/12/08 12:44:13 62 BESART / MATTHEW BARNEY

Matthew Barney

Matthew Barney (1967, San Francisco, CA, USA) is one of the most singular international artists of the last two decades. The limits of the body and of its physical actions were from early on in his career a subject exploited by the artist, using different media, allowing for a glimpse of his past as a sportsman and of his particular interest in performances. In the video work facility of DECLINE, presented at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in 1991, the artist interacted with sculptures and climbed up to the ceiling of the gallery, suggesting connections between physical stamina and sexuality. In other works, articulating objects and sculptures with video works within the same physical space, Barney started to integrate characters, some real, like the magician Harry Houdini, and others inspired by Greek or Celtic mythology. In 2003, seven years after Barney won the first edition of the Hugo Boss Prize (1996), the Guggenheim Museum in New York staged a retrospective exhibition dedicated to the five films of the artist’s Cremaster cycle, which included installations comprising sculptures, drawing and photographs. Created as a non-linear narrative, and quoting and associating elements from the life of the artist, Mormon religion, Freemasonry, American pop culture and technology, the Cremaster opus is constructed as an astonishing metaphor on sexual differentiation and the nature of sculpture. Cremaster3: Brethren refers to the third film, the action of which takes place in 1930s New York at the Chrysler building. The image shows different characters: a family of pallbearers, and Gary Gilmore, the Mormon killer, returned to life using the decomposed body of a female character. Some of the key elements of the Cremaster film project are present here: the surprising fiction, religious references (the title refers to the Brotherhood Church, a sect originated in Ireland) and the body as a site subject to transformation and action.

José Marmeleira

Selected bibliography Matthew Barney & Joseph Boys: All in the Present Must Be Transformed, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2007. Francis Mckee, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Drawing Restraint, Volume 1, Walther König, Cologne, 2006. The Cremaster Cycle, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2002.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 62 22/12/08 12:44:13 62 BESART / MATTHEW BARNEY 63 BESART / MATTHEW BARNEY

Matthew Barney

José Marmeleira

Cremaster3: Brethren, 2002 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 137 x 112 cm · Edition 4/6 + 1 AP

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 62 22/12/08 12:44:13 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 63 22/12/08 12:44:15 64 BESART / UTA BARTH

Uta Barth

Utah Barth’s (1958, Berlin, Germany) quiet and silent photographs are reflexive equations of sunsets, created as serial portraits depicting calmly migrating shadows – from the window to the wall, or to the ceiling or the floor – against which light defines elongated silhouettes of anonymous objects, either cut off or invisible. Horizontally juxtaposed to the initial images, completing or interrupting them, tenuous spatial (and chromatic) variations and dramatic optical (and mne- monic) inversions of the same subject emerge. The latter, either in negatives or seemingly burnt by an overexposure to light, relate to the phenomenon of retinal persistence and decentralise the subject of empty barrenness to the scientific nature of vision. Barth’s photographs do not have a real first character other than the gaze itself, but the camera’s gaze remains fixed at a never revealed point. Daily life is one of the most recurring subjects in Barth’s work since 1994, when the artist developed, together with Vikky Alexandre, a site-specific project for an empty house (Domestic Setting Gallery, Los Angeles). Sundial, her most recent series of works, extends, familiarises and tames Barth’s meditative and contemplative space of action. The inside is now her own home, transformed into an observatory, whose differentiated spaces are now supports for ‘light paintings’ (captured through the natural movement of the sun at different days of the year), as if they were organic watch dials capable of seizing the swift passage of time. Sundial appears in the wake of previous atmospheric investigations (white blind – bright red; nowhere near; … in passing; … and of time) which evoke, from Vermeer to Hopper, the history of painting. However, the experience of the work is deepened by the very characteristic and entirely unusual development of a specific focus, depth of field and framing, which allow for a more effective exploration and subversion of the conventions associated with the cultural mechanisms of image production and perception. Sundial was presented in recent solo exhibitions at the Sies + Höke Gallery (Düsseldorf, 2008), the Andréhn-Schiptjenko gallery (Stockholm, 2008) and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (New York, 2007).

Lígia Afonso

Selected bibliography Matthew Higgs, Timothy Martin, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Uta Barth, Phaidon, London, 2004. Uta Barth. White Blind (Bright Red), Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe, 2004. Uta Barth. Nowhere Near, Acme Gallery/Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles/New York, 1999. At the Edge of the Decipherable: Recent Photographs by Uta Barth, MoCA, St. Ann’s Press, Los Angeles, 1995.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 64 22/12/08 12:44:15 64 BESART / UTA BARTH 65 BESART / UTA BARTH

Uta Barth

Lígia Afonso

Sundial (07.12), 2007 Digital Chromogenic Print (Process LightJet) · 3 x (76 x 95.5 cm) · Edition 5/6 + 2 AP

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 64 22/12/08 12:44:15 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 65 22/12/08 12:45:26 66 BESART / UTA BARTH

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 66 22/12/08 12:45:28 66 BESART / UTA BARTH 67 BESART / UTA BARTH

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 66 22/12/08 12:45:28 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 67 22/12/08 12:45:31 68 BESART / BERND AND HILLA BECHER

Bernd and Hilla Becher

Bernd Becher (1931, Siegen, Germany – 2007, Rostock, Germany) and Hilla Becher (1934, Potsdam, Germany) had a leading role in the creation of what is generally known as the photographic perspective. The aim of this approach, characterised by the negation of subjectivity, is to take the construction of the photographic image as an objective fact. The Bechers’ photographs are facts, without any space for projecting the inner world of the subject. They are descriptions of shapes, volumes and, most of all, they create and awareness and a visibility of space previously only known in architecture and sculpture. It was therefore no surprise that the Venice Biennial’s Golden Lion for sculpture was awarded to the artists in 1991 for the series Topologies. Their interest in photography has a strictly typological character. It is expressed not only through the point of view taken in relation to the object that is photographed, but also in the way in which the object is organised. The artists themselves call their works ’anonymous sculptures’, which underlines how much their practice is related to sculpture. But the anthropological function of their work is not questioned here – if one understands it as a survey of what will inevitably be destroyed with the evolution of technology and the transformation of industrial activity – but rather the detection of shapes and spaces convened in those particular types of construction. The view achieved is a synoptic view on reality – only possible due to their relentless approach – in which the orders, regularities and functionalities of each structure are revealed. The result of this global vision is a kind of aperçu, which, according to Goethe’s interpretation of this act of intelligence, is in strict agree- ment with the sensitive power of vision, and which represents the understanding of the whole on which the intuition of the details of each single object depends. According to Goethe this is ‘a joined apprehension of what is reciprocal, eliminating what is extra-essential’. This is the best description of Becher’s work: the global vision they create trains the eyes for what is essential, characteristic. It is a process in which detection of formal regularities creates a new object, and subsequently a new spatial, sculptural, sensitive experience.

Nuno Crespo

Selected bibliography Susanne Lange, Bernd and Hilla Becher – Life and Work, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006. Typologien, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2005. Grundformen, Industrieller Bauten, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2004. Hochöfen, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2002. Robert Smithson, Bernd & Hilla Becher. Field Trips, Hopefulmonster, Turin, 2002. Industrial Façades, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 68 22/12/08 12:45:31 68 BESART / BERND AND HILLA BECHER 69 BESART / BERND AND HILLA BECHER

Bernd and Hilla Becher

Nuno Crespo

Water Towers, 1963-1988, 2005 Gelatin silver prints · 173.36 x 142.88 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 68 22/12/08 12:45:31 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 69 22/12/08 12:45:33 70 BESART / DANIEL BLAUFUKS

Daniel Blaufuks

Author of a body of work developed around issues related to the experience of memory, identity, travelling and diaspora, Daniel Blaufuks (1963, Lisbon, Portugal) is nowadays one of the most influential photographers of his generation in the Portuguese art scene, with a growing international recognition, mainly in coun- tries like the USA , Spain and Brazil, where he exhibited regularly in recent years. Blaufuks was born into a Jewish family and lived in Germany for several years before returning to Portugal where he started his training in photography in the late 1980s. He diversified his practice by contributing as a photographer to national newspapers and magazines, while continuing with his studies in London and New York. This expansion of his frame of reference was certainly decisive in his subsequent departure from the immediate language of photojournalism towards staged photographs with an evocative nature. Black and white gave way to the use of colour and the exploration of pictorial values, which have become characteristic of Blaufuks’ creative strategy. Simultaneously he found new possibilities in video, cinema and the production of books on photography. He is ultimately interested in photography as ‘archive’, a term coined by Rosalind Krauss. In Travelling Light, a diptych from the series Collected Short Stories (2003), Blaufuks creates a sequence of moments that are presented in complement- ing pairs of contrasting images (with each having an individual significant titles) following a logic of cinema editing, marked by different frames and urban characters. These fictional visual fragments exercise the viewer’s imagination, as the image ‘interval’ or conjunction suggests an archive of shareable memories. His work focuses on the narrative condition of the image and the complicity between photography, painting, literature and cinema reaches another dimension in a recent exhibition, No Próximo Sábado, at Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon (2006). There Blaufuks gathered photographs from different periods of time printed in various formats. It was the very geometry of the space – inside and outside the image – that intensified the subjective and enigmatic density of what was shown, thus highlighting the testimonial character of the photographs. This exhibition led to him receiving the BES Photo Award in 2006, followed by the Best Photography Book of the Year in the International Category Award, awarded in 2007 by PhotoEspaña, for his must-have publication Sob Céus Estranhos [under strange skies].

Lúcia Marques

Selected bibliography O Arquivo, Vera Cortês Agência de Arte, Lisbon, 2008. Álbum, Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães, 2008. Blaufuks, Caja Negra Ediciones, Ephemera Ediciones, Madrid, 2007. Sob Céus Estranhos, Tinta-da-china, Lisbon, 2007. Daniel Blaufuks. Collected Short Stories, Power Books, Lisbon, 2003.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 70 22/12/08 12:45:33 70 BESART / DANIEL BLAUFUKS 71 BESART / DANIEL BLAUFUKS

Daniel Blaufuks

Lúcia Marques

Untitled, 2005 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 120 x 160 cm · Edition 2/5

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Travelling Light, from the series Collected Short Stories, 2002 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 2 x (160 x 120 cm) · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 72 22/12/08 12:45:43 72 BESART / DANIEL BLAUFUKS 73 BESART / DANIEL BLAUFUKS

Travelling Light, from the series Collected Short Stories, 2002 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 2 x (160 x 120 cm) · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 72 22/12/08 12:45:43 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 73 22/12/08 12:45:45 74 BESART / BLEDA Y ROSA

Bleda y Rosa

Human activity at the crossroads between memory and landscape – or time and space – is the fundamental issue tackled in the work of María Bleda (1969, Castellón, Spain) and José María Rosa (1970, Albacete, Spain). Examples of this particular focus can be found in their series Campos de Fútbol (1992-1995), Campos de Batalla (1995-1999), Ciudades (1998-2002) and Origen (2003-2007). In the series Campos de Batalla [battleﬁelds], Bleda y Rosa have photographed landscapes that were once, in the past, gathering places, moments of decisive action and of extreme violence. However, due to the passing of time what we see now are lifeless ﬁelds, bucolic and silent atmospheres. The perception of history, embodied by the remains and tracks, is more exciting for these two photographers than the hunt for imposing monuments. If in Calatañazor (1995) the main feature is the ruin, in Covadonga (1996) it is the mist and in Campo de San Jorge (1999) the traits of contemporary modern life that have been added. The titles suggest mental images of intensity, noise and movement. They provoke the viewer to search for signs of convulsive events relevant for the course of history in Spain. In addition to the geographical coordinates, the viewer is also provided with the times that correspond with the years during which the battles took place. While in fact, all that remains is the mist and the dust of those who battled. The preferred diptych structure suggests the presence of two opposing parties but also the articulation between past and present. Art History has paid much attention to war scenes: we are reminded for instance of the action-packed scenes painted by Paolo Uccello. The connection to epic histories as taught in schools is also immediate. The images from these histories are built up from documental records. What Bleda y Rosa provide are photographic records of places where history was written, marked by the delay between fact and representation. We are left with the feeling the artists complete the historical records by re-associating the time with the space of these battles.

Luísa Especial

Selected bibliography Bleda y Rosa, Circuit d´Art Contemporani/Generalitat Valenciana, Valencia, 2001.

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Bleda y Rosa

Luísa Especial

Selected bibliography Bleda y Rosa, Circuit d´Art Contemporani/Generalitat Valenciana, Valencia, 2001.

Calatañazor, en torno ao año 1000, 1995 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 85 x 150 cm · Edition 1/10 Covadonga, año 718, 1996 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 85 x 150 cm · Edition 5/10 Campo de S Jorge, 14 de Agosto de 1385, 1999 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 85 x 150 cm · Edition 1/10

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 74 22/12/08 12:45:45 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 75 22/12/08 12:46:03 76 BESART / CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI

Christian Boltanski

‘I wish I was a real painter to truly believe in the divine essence of painting. But 1 Christian Boltanski, ‘L’art n’est I reject such an idea and that is my misfortune.’1 Although Christian Boltanski que de l’art’, interview with Delphine Renard, in Boltanski, Centre (1944, Paris, France), who currently lives and works in Malakoff near Paris, aban- Pompidou, Paris, 1984, pp. 70-85. doned his pictorial practice in 1967, he still paints the world, taking as point of 2 Christian Boltanski and Catherine departure his individual mythologies. In 1984 Boltanski wrote an official biogra- Grenier, La vie possible de Christian Boltanski, Seuil, Paris, 2007, p. 243. phy for the catalogue of his retrospective exhibition held at the Centre Pompidou: ‘1958. Paints, wants to make art. 1968. Stops buying modern art magazines, suf- fers a shock, takes black and white, tragic, human photographs.’ Lumières (blue pyramid – Claudine) is part of a set created at the beginning of the year 2000, exhibited in New York at the Marian Goodman gallery (entitled ‘Coming and Going’ as a reference to all continuous coming and going of the artist in his work) which resumes and develops the principle that underlies the Monuments series, started in 1984: a newly framed photograph, enveloped in a composition with an incandescent light. Christian Boltanski explores the subject of loss and memory, granting his works the aura of an altar on the undefined bor- der between what is anonymous and identifiable, wonderful and sacred, sentimental and tragic, with an implicit reference to Shoah. The artist acknowledges a mixture of different rites and traditions as sources of inspiration: Byzantine icons illuminated by candles, the Jewish Hanukkah, catholic celebrations. He explores the small memory facing a story in which, in fact, anything could happen. ‘Generally, I use ordinary images. (…) What gives them their dramatic character is how the image is handled – for instance, expanded heads may look like skulls – and the title.’2

Jean-François Chougnet

Selected bibliography Christian Boltanski and Catherine Grenier, La vie possible de Christian Boltanski, Seuil, Paris, 2007. Christian Boltanski, Time, Hatje Cantz, Ostﬁldern, 2006. Christian Boltanski, Kaddish, Museum of Modern Art of Paris, Paris, 1998. Didier Semin, Tamar Garg, Donald B. Kuspit and Georges Perec, Christian Boltanski, Phaidon, London, 1997. Bernard Blistène (ed.), Boltanski, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1984.

Lumières (blue pyramid – Claudine), 2000 Black and white photograph and 46 blue light bulbs · 236 x 205.5 cm · Edition of 1

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 76 22/12/08 12:46:05 76 BESART / CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI 77 BESART / IRVING PENN

Christian Boltanski

Jean-François Chougnet

Lumières (blue pyramid – Claudine), 2000 Black and white photograph and 46 blue light bulbs · 236 x 205.5 cm · Edition of 1

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 76 22/12/08 12:46:05 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 77 22/12/08 12:46:06 78 BESART / CATARINA BOTELHO

Catarina Botelho

Catarina Botelho (1981, Lisbon, Portugal) recently participated in several group exhibitions in Lisbon, Madrid and Munich. Both 2007 and 2008 have been significant years in the young artist’s career: in 2007 she presented Adiar o Coração [delay the heart], her first solo exhibition, at Galeria Módulo, in Lisbon. She was also awarded the first prize in the third edition of the BES Revelação award and she presented the work Segunda Pele [second skin] at Casa de Serralves, in Oporto. She was also selected for the second edition of the photography compe- tition staged within the scope of the Creativity and Artistic Creation programme of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Catarina Botelho’s work is entirely based on photography as a medium and on its intimacy as the basis for artistic practice. Her focus is the ongoing, daily and persistent labour of looking at the presence (or absence) of people who form part of the artist’s life. Botelho’s project manifests itself through a string of visual dialogues with the cinematographic image (the suspension of a moment, a gesture), the history of painting (the sensitivity in the relation between colour and light and its expression in the composition) and, more recently, with her interest in the classical representation of the genre of the still-life, revealing an affinity with notions that are part of sculpture, including volume, scale, inside/outside. The works included in this collection, Marta verde and Joana e copo de água, both from 2005, suggest the reading of a narrative, the projection of a before and after regarding the moments captured, where, in the movement between what is particular (private) and what is universal (what we can all identify with) the work of Catarina Botelho finds its place.

Maria do Mar Fazenda

Selected bibliography Migrations – Arts in Translation, Ayuntamiento de Córdoba, Cordova, 2007. BES Revelação 2007, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Oporto, 2006. Manicómio do Doutor Heribaldo Raposo – Interpretações, Museu da Cidade/Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, Lisbon, 2006. Last & Lost – Ein Atlas des verschwindenden Europas, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt, 2006. Inéditos 2005, Caja Madrid, Madrid, 2005.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 78 22/12/08 12:46:06 78 BESART / CATARINA BOTELHO 79 BESART / CATARINA BOTELHO

Catarina Botelho

Maria do Mar Fazenda

Marta verde, 2005 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 60 x 40 cm · Edition 3/3 Joana e copo de água, 2005 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 40 x 60 cm · Edition 1/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 78 22/12/08 12:46:06 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 79 22/12/08 12:46:17 80 BESART / PEDRO CABRITA REIS

Pedro Cabrita Reis

Pedro Cabrita Reis (1956, Lisbon, Portugal) considers himself mainly as a painter 1 Adrian Searle, A conversation with at a time when painting is an apparently impossible accomplishment. He has Pedro Cabrita Reis, in Pedro Cabrita Reis, Hatje Cantz, Ostﬁldern, 2003, realised several installations (for instance at the Venice Biennale, in 2003) in p. 67. which architecture and its materials take on a leading role in a context in which 2 Pedro Cabrita Reis, Centro de Arte ‘nature has disappeared as a reference element’. ‘It is so lost within us that we Moderna José de Azevedo Perdigão – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, have reached a point at which architecture is the only way of making the world Lisbon, 1992, p. 148. comprehensible.’1 Cabrita Reis uses sculpture, installation and painting resources to suggest, in an associative and to an extent abstract manner, a vision of the world that tends to the essence of things. Therefore, the use of shapes from a water tank or well, the white neon lights, the bricks and the door, elements that frequently feature in the artist’s vocabulary, allude not only to the objects and their raw beauty but also subtly to values of sharing and communication. Around 2000, Cabrita Reis revisited the history of painting with the series Cabinets d’amateur, that consisted of great transpositions from the eighteenth- century ‘curiosity cabinets’ into recycled material and monochromatic surfaces. Taking as point of reference Goya’s El Sueño de la Razón Produce Monstruos (Plate 43 from Los Caprichos, created in 1797-1798), the series The sleep of reason was born, in which exceptionally Cabrita Reis uses photography covered with an acrylic layer. This is also a way of erasing the reference in the quest for an intuitive way of thinking. In the words of the artist himself, chaos matters as ‘material for the permanent construction of the mystery, as art, contrary to other forms of knowledge, is more perfect depending on the level of darkness it leads us to.’2

Jean-François Chougnet

Selected bibliography Pedro Cabrita Reis True Gardens, Kunsthaus Graz, Graz, 2008. Pedro Cabrita Reis. Fundação, Lisbon, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2006. João Fernandes, José Miranda, Adrian Searle and Michael Tarantino, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Hatje Cantz, Ostﬁldern, 2003. Pedro Cabrita Reis, Charta, Milan, 1999.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 80 22/12/08 12:46:17 80 BESART / PEDRO CABRITA REIS 81 BESART / PEDRO CABRITA REIS

Pedro Cabrita Reis

Jean-François Chougnet

The sleep of reason #1, II series, 2000 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) mounted on Alubond and acrylic paint · 50 x 75 cm · Unique print The sleep of reason #2, III series, 2000 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) mounted on Alubond and acrylic paint · 50 x 75 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 80 22/12/08 12:46:17 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 81 22/12/08 12:48:42 82 BESART / RUI CALÇADA BASTOS

Rui Calçada Bastos

Rui Calçada Bastos (1971, Lisbon, Portugal), a Portuguese artist living in Berlin, has developed his career into different practices and typologies concerning the use of still and moving pictures through photography, video and occasionally sculpture and installations. The core theme of his work is defined by a nostalgic approach to autobiographic elements: either created from real fragments of memory or from fictional elements, through the use of the artist’s own body, as can be seen in his recent films. With a career that started with the use of video, moving images and sound, Calçada Bastos has, however, defined an approach in which the technology involved is often masked by an archaic and almost archaeological tone, that seems to evoke the memory of German expressionist silent movies, using black and white, and locating the action in an uncertain past. Calçada Bastos has used this method to progressively build a universe in which memory, or a certain view of the past, is its matter. In the photographs included in this collection, derived from the video The Mirror Suitcase Man (2004), one can find this passage into a melancholic and cinematographic universe. It reminds us of Film (1965), Samuel Beckett’s cinematographic work starring Buster Keaton. Both works show a fading of the subject in relation to the nostalgia of the past. In Calçada Bastos’ images the reference to the timelessness of what has been lived is created through a simple but cunning mechanism: the photographed character carries a mirrored suitcase that reflects the space around it. Thus, the images identify their own context, which is of a specific architectural nature, which in turn defines the range of the flâneur present in the image. On the other hand, the use of a mirror and its reflection references the universe of the collage, which is here created from within the photographic image itself.

Delﬁm Sardo

Selected bibliography Rui Calçada Bastos, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2003.

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Rui Calçada Bastos

Delﬁm Sardo

Selected bibliography Rui Calçada Bastos, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2003.

Untitled #08/05, 2005 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 85 x 110 cm · Edition 2/3 + AP Untitled #43/06, 2006 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 85 x 110 cm · Edition 2/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 82 22/12/08 12:48:42 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 83 22/12/08 12:48:46 84 BESART / SOPHIE CALLE

Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle (1953, Paris, France) has been investigating the conceptual character and procedures of artistic creation since the 1970s, presenting photographic works that generate a lasting memory of their experience. She also exhibits panels of her own texts, including annotations and notes, allowing for the viewer to mentally frame or even reconstitute her experiences. Frequently projecting the personal nature of a view which mirrors the circumstances of her own individual history, Calle has put aspects of her private life, a life marked by paths crossed, by encounters and mis-encounters, centre stage in her work. The photographic works in which she uses methods of investigation are undoubtedly her most well-known. In 1979, for example, she decided to follow a stranger without their knowledge. The result was Suite Vénitienne, a story of pursuit by the artist. Her autobiographic focus is also present in interventions that contain intimate statements. Such is the case in Exquisite Pain, which includes four works acquired by the BESart collection. This series, produced in 2000 following an experience in her personal life, is based on a story that goes back to 1984, but which the artist only wanted to materialise as an artwork 15 years after the event took place. The story started when the artist won a scholarship from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to travel to Japan for three months. She departed on 25 October 1984, not knowing that this date would mark the 92-day countdown until she experienced a feeling of unhappiness caused by the painful rupture of a love story. These and other works by Calle are disturbing because of their voyeuristic appeal, the record of shared lives, but above all because they reveal the natural ease with which she creates the relation between art and her private life. These works show detachment concerning the safety of privacy, her own and or anyone else’s. Sophie Calle represented France during the 52nd Venice Biennial (2007).

Sandra Vieira Jürgens

Selected bibliography Anne Sauvageot, Sophie Calle. l’art caméléon, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 2007. Sophie Calle, Exquisite pain, Thames & Hudson, London, 2004. Robert Beck, ‘Paranoia by the dashboard light: Sophie Calle’s and Gregory Shephard’s “Double blind”’, Parkett, no. 36, June 1993, pp. 109-117. Sophie Calle, L’hôtel, L’Étoile, Paris, 1984. Jean Baudrillard, Sophie Calle, Suite Vénitienne. Please follow me, L’Étoile, Paris, 1983.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 84 22/12/08 12:48:46 84 BESART / SOPHIE CALLE 85 BESART / SOPHIE CALLE

Sophie Calle

Sandra Vieira Jürgens

Exquisite Pain (Count Down – 54), 2000 Photographic prints stamped with red ink · 38.5 x 61 x 3 cm · Edition 1/3 Exquisite Pain (Count Down – 79), 2000 Photographic prints stamped with red ink · 40.5 x 31.5 x 3 cm · Edition 1/3 Exquisite Pain (Count Down – 81), 2000 Photographic prints stamped with red ink · 52 x 61.5 x 3 cm · Edition 1/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 84 22/12/08 12:48:46 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 85 22/12/08 12:48:54 86 BESART / SOPHIE CALLE

Sophie Calle Exquisite Pain (Day 6), 2000 Photographic prints and embroidery text panels · 2 x (50 x 62 cm); 2 x (134.5 x 62 cm) · Edition 2/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 86 22/12/08 12:48:56 86 BESART / SOPHIE CALLE 87 BESART / GÉRARD CASTELLO-LOPES

Gérard Castello-Lopes

Photographer, essayist and film critic and professional, Castello-Lopes (1925, Vichy, France) plays a role as reference in Portuguese photography of the second half of the 1950s. A self-taught man, he started with photography in 1956, as part of a group that stood out from the photographic environment at the time, dominated by the photography of the Salões do Grémio Português de Fotografia (Portuguese Photography Guild), the photo clubs and the new state regime propaganda. Living between Paris and Lisbon, Castello-Lopes shot intensively in Portugal and throughout Europe, reaching his largest production in 1957 and 1958. During his self-taught learning process, he was strongly influenced by the 1930s’ photographic humanism school represented by the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Brassaï and Robert Doisneau, and later on by the photographs from news reporters and newly created photo agencies like Rapho (1945) and Magnum (1947). His contact with Cartier-Bresson’s book, Images à la sauvette (1952), was decisive for the development of his approach and Castello- Lopes adopted the aesthetics of that decisive moment: composition and geometry were his guiding principles and even the mythical Leica became a model for his photography practice. He shot in Portugal creating a testimony of an oppressed, poor and sad society, in which photography is seen as a means to a better world. Following the rules of humanist photography, he located his actors in a social and human context, at work or in leisure situations, showing the family ties assimilated to a social class and the work environment. In the 1980s he abandoned daily life and reality, distancing himself from the strong ‘Bressonian’ references and his photography became more ‘deserted’. He focused his look on what he called the ‘paradox of appearances’ and in the search for an archetypical result which, according to Castello-Lopes, makes style and signature emerge.

Luísa Costa Dias

Selected bibliography Oui/Non, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, 2004. Gérard Castello-Lopes, Reflexões sobre fotografia – Eu, a Fotografia, os Outros, Assírio & Alvim, Lisbon, 2004.

Sophie Calle Exquisite Pain (Day 6), 2000 Photographic prints and embroidery text panels · 2 x (50 x 62 cm); 2 x (134.5 x 62 cm) · Edition 2/3

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Lisboa, 1956 Gelatin silver print · 50 x 40 cm Roma, 1957 Gelatin silver print · 50 x 40 cm Sines, 1958 Gelatin silver print · 50 x 40 cm

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 88 22/12/08 12:49:02 88 BESART / GÉRARD CASTELLO-LOPES 89 BESART / GÉRARD CASTELLO-LOPES

Lisboa, 1956 Gelatin silver print · 50 x 40 cm Monsaraz, 1963 Gelatin silver print · 40 x 50 cm Roma, 1957 Gelatin silver print · 50 x 40 cm Paris, 1985 Gelatin silver print · 50 x 40 cm Sines, 1958 Gelatin silver print · 50 x 40 cm Porto, 1989 Gelatin silver print · 50 x 40 cm

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 88 22/12/08 12:49:02 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 89 22/12/08 12:49:09 90 BESART / ANDRÉ CEPEDA

André Cepeda

André Cepeda’s (1976, Coimbra, Portugal) work is not characterised by the attention given to the pictorial nature of images but to their object dimension, their sculptural character, which, following the Dusseldorf school, was perceived to be part of the photographic image. His photographs, usually large formats, depict landscapes in which human presence seems absent. The points from which he organises the visual ﬁeld belong to architecture: piles of construction debris, abandoned buildings, objects used and left behind, or even ruins. The architecture that catches the artist’s attention does not have a function as such: his look, transformed into a printed image on paper, ﬁnds in architecture a kind of organic extension of common human presence. Use of the spaces embodied by his pictures is an ordinary, not attentive, accidental use. And his ruins – urban, dehumanised – do not carry any visible sentimental weight, but are rather a synonym of abandonment and never refer to a tradition or heritage that must be preserved and honoured. In Cepeda’s works, life appears as a trace: bodies, when they exist, are like ghosts. The places photographed by the artist have a timid and humanised nature, reduced and transformed as they are into an element of human comfort. His is not an existentialist or critical manifesto but an acknowledgement of the essential solitude surrounding all beings and all things. And this sentimental, or spiritual if you like, element is what grants depth to these pictures, and it is through this depth that each of these places receives a contemplative quality. Cepeda’s works are developed from visual exercises that transform what is usually imperceptible, albeit marginally present, into focus points for the human eye. Each image has in its own condition a kind of sensitive architecture: its process is not a quick and intuitive record of what happens to pass. Each ‘set’ is carefully studied, created and captured under ideal conditions of visibility (weather, space, light). And this is why each photograph represents a unique place, the existing conditions only possible through the intensive exploration of the sensitivity of bodies and geometrical objects to the light, the camera and the ink on paper.

Nuno Crespo

Selected bibliography André Cepeda. Anacronia, Espace Photographique Contretype, Brussels, 2005. Viseu, António Henriques Galeria de Arte Contemporânea, Viseu, 2004. Corpo, Tempo, Desejo e Morte, Galeria Massa, Oporto, 2002.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 90 22/12/08 12:49:09 90 BESART / ANDRÉ CEPEDA 91 BESART / ANDRÉ CEPEDA

André Cepeda

Nuno Crespo

Anacronia, Bruxelas, 2000 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) mounted on aluminium · 70 x 70 cm · Edition 3/5 Anacronia, Bruxelas, 2000 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) mounted on aluminium · 70 x 70 cm · Edition 2/5

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 90 22/12/08 12:49:09 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 91 22/12/08 12:49:18 92 BESART / NUNO CERA

Nuno Cera

The series of photographs by Nuno Cera (1972, Beja, Portugal) presented here are landscapes containing two opposite forces: destruction and generation. They are images of a forest in Viseu, after the large devastating fires occurred in 2004. This series, as well as some of the artist’s most recent work, is a kind of poetic documentary in which the particular reality captured and witnessed by the photographs is joined by the transformation of the documentary object into a subject of universal experience. The landscape from Viseu represents all landscapes affected by catastrophes: fires, nuclear accidents, spillages, etc., events that are some kind of trauma inflicted upon a being. Here photographs cannot be used for therapeutic means, but rather they are like a means of recognition of their geometry, composition and the structural role they have in creating what is visible. The nostalgia that characterises these works – also present in the artist’s recent photographs on spirits and ghosts – marks a point of human existence common to all and to everything: one is always on the edge, that is, as all that we call existence can be lost at any given moment. But Dark Forces (2004) is not a lament – and this is what gives it its poetic force or rage – it is a sign of resistance: the burnt desolated forest shows signs of regeneration, nature appears as a vital energy transforming what is dead into alive, what does not exist into existence. These photographs are a kind of still lifes (the double meaning of this expression in English allows for a better understanding of this notion): not in the sense that they represent nature as a reflex, like in still-life paintings, but as a way to identify what is still resisting, what is still alive, even amid the greatest forms of devastation. The passage from the paradigm of the pictorial representation of life in a still life to the paradigm of the pictorial representation of what is still acknowledged as alive, of a ‘still life’.

Nuno Crespo

Selected bibliography Nuno Cera. Fantasmas, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, 2006. Diogo Lopes, Cimêncio, Fenda, Lisbon, 2002.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 92 22/12/08 12:49:18 92 BESART / NUNO CERA 93 BESART / NUNO CERA

Nuno Cera

Nuno Crespo

Selected bibliography Nuno Cera. Fantasmas, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, 2006. Diogo Lopes, Cimêncio, Fenda, Lisbon, 2002.

Dark Forces #1, 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) mounted on Diasec · 70 x 100 cm · Edition 2/3 + 1 AP Dark Forces #3, 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) mounted on Diasec · 70 x 100 cm · Edition 2/3 + 1 AP Dark Forces #7, 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) mounted on Diasec · 70 x 100 cm · Edition 3/3 + 1 AP

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 92 22/12/08 12:49:18 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 93 22/12/08 12:49:21 94 BESART / FILIPA CÉSAR

Filipa César

More so than photography, video has been Filipa César’s (1975, Oporto, Portugal) preferred medium for her exploration of images that are apparently made for documentary purposes, but that are always subtly displaced from the language of realism to that of fables, comments and reflections on the medium used. In her works, the strangeness of the gazes and gestures of anonymous characters that are observed in public contexts is the structuring element when she captures enigmatic situations that make us wonder. In this series (a response to an invitation from the Coimbra Centro de Artes Visuais, in 2004, for an exhibition on labour), more than the movements which are progressively codified in a way the still image cannot provide, these are static moments in which closing in on utilitarian mechanisation allows for us to understand, according to the artist, ‘the absurdity of approaching the subject of money, probably the most abstract translation of the value of labour’. In rooms whose function represents a most distant level of impersonality, such as a vault or a bank depository, the artist has photographed the people who work there, taking on more or less fictional roles: they discreetly challenge the order of things through the performance of simple shapes in the choreographic unpre- dictability of the location. The claustrophobic conditions, the discomfort of what is apparently underground lighting and the seeming disinterest in the machines and parcels provide a kind of crude and anti-poetic objectivity that submerges us into the inhospitable core of this realm of activity. In 2003 Filipa César received the Prémio União Latina award and in 2008 her work Le Passeur was presented in a solo exhibition at the Ellipse Foundation Art Centre (Alcoitão). Other recent exhibitions of her work were Ringbahn at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, in Oporto (2005), the F for Fake exhibition at ArtBasel (Basel) and at the Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art gallery (Lisbon), in 2006.

Leonor Nazaré

Selected bibliography Sergio Edelsztein, ‘Filipa Césa’, in Ice Cream, Phaidon, London, 2007. Filipa César. Ringbahn, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Oporto, 2005. Filipa César. Belgrade Footnotes, Revolver, Berlin, 2004. Diogo Lopes, ‘Berlin Zoo’, in Poetic Justice, 8. Istanbul Bienal, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, Istambul, 2003. Pedro Lapa, ‘Disseminações’, in Disseminações, Culturgest, Lisbon, 2001.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 94 22/12/08 12:49:21 94 BESART / FILIPA CÉSAR 95 BESART / FILIPA CÉSAR

Filipa César

Leonor Nazaré

Espírito Santo (caixa forte desactivada), 2003 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) mounted on aluminium · 120 x 180 cm · Edition 2/3 Espírito Santo (caixa forte), 2003 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process), mounted on aluminium · 120 x 180 cm · Edition 2/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 94 22/12/08 12:49:21 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 95 22/12/08 12:49:24 96 BESART / FILIPA CÉSAR

Filipa César Espírito Santo (arquivo informático), 2003 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) mounted on aluminium · 120 x 180 cm · Edition 2/3 Espírito Santo (sala das máquinas), 2003 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) mounted on aluminium · 120 x 180 cm · Edition 2/3 Espírito Santo (arquivo morto), 2003 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) mounted on aluminium · 120 x 180 cm · Edition 2/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 96 22/12/08 12:49:28 96 BESART / FILIPA CÉSAR 97 BESART / HANNAH COLLINS

Hannah Collins

Hannah Collins (1956, London, United Kingdom) had her first solo exhibition, entitled Film Stills, at London’s Matt’s Gallery in 1987. Since then, she has exhibited her works regularly in galleries and institutions, both in Europe and the United States. Her participation in the third Istanbul Biennale with the film Signs of Life (1992), led to her nomination for the Turner Prize in 1993. Collins’ practice is divided into two strands, photography and film, and sometimes a combination of the two. Her approach, based on a continuous demand for signs, or shadows, of a permanently moving and adjusting society, is however always present. This incisive sociological questioning, which shows through in her work, is often determined by a cinematographic language. The sequential narrative, and the approximation of sensations – characteristic to cinema – are devices that better translate the familiarity, integration and sharing with the other. However, her work also entails new descriptions of the city and of our own cultures. Collins’ most recent film projects focus on several communities who live in situations of displacement (Every Other Day, 2004, portrays the integration of three newly arrived African men in three European cities), or even of segregation (La Mina, 2004, is a portrait of the gipsy community living in the suburban areas of Barcelona). The artist moves and extracts her own poetics from the urban context, generating photographs like the series True Stories. Her gathering of different views from different cities – Madrid, Istanbul, New York, Barcelona, Lisbon, etc. – started in 1998 and according to the artist the images may be understood as stills from a possible film on feelings found again and again in certain places. In these silent images, urban activity is emptied and evoked only through a certain memory of a dialogue, a line, a rumour that colours the sky.

Maria do Mar Fazenda

Selected bibliography Hannah Collins, Historia en curso. Películas y fotograﬁas, Fundación la Caixa, Barcelona, 2008. Finding, Transmitting, Receiving, Black Dog Publishing, London, 2007. La Mina, VOX, Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montreal, 2004. Shopping, Echo Books, Barcelona, 1996. Hannah Collins, Centre d’Art Santa Mònica – Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona, 1993.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 96 22/12/08 12:49:28 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 97 22/12/08 19:03:57 98 BESART / HANNAH COLLINS

True Stories (Lisbon 1), 2006 Digital Chromogenic Print (Process LightJet) · 175 x 235 cm · Edition 1/3 True Stories (Lisbon 3), 2006 Digital Chromogenic Print (Process LightJet) · 175 x 235 cm · Edition 1/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 98 22/12/08 19:04:02 98 BESART / HANNAH COLLINS 99 BESART / HANNAH COLLINS

True Stories (Lisbon 1), 2006 Digital Chromogenic Print (Process LightJet) · 175 x 235 cm · Edition 1/3 True Stories (Lisbon 2), 2006 Digital Chromogenic Print (Process LightJet) · 175 x 235 cm · Edition 1/3 True Stories (Lisbon 3), 2006 Digital Chromogenic Print (Process LightJet) · 175 x 235 cm · Edition 1/3 True Stories (Lisbon 4), 2006 Digital Chromogenic Print (Process LightJet) · 175 x 235 cm · Edition 1/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 98 22/12/08 19:04:02 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 99 22/12/08 19:04:09 100 BESART / CECÍLIA COSTA

Cecília Costa

After having initially worked for two years towards a degree in Mathematics, Cecília Costa (1971, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal) eventually graduated with a degree in Visual Arts in 2001. This ambivalence about which field to choose (science and art) has generated the motivations developed by the artist in her work. Pli (2003) – a title/theme that later on developed into several series – is a clear sign of the relation between her interests. Curator Isabel Carlos selected her for the Sydney Biennial in 2004, under the well-matched header On Reason and Emotion. From that decisive moment of recognition on, the artist has had solo exhibitions of Pli (2005) at the Baginski Galeria/Projectos, Lisbon, and Novembro (2006) and Chatelet des Halles (2007) both at Galeria Pedro Oliveira, in Oporto. The series of photographic pairs entitled Let’s Dance (2004) originates from a precise proposal, namely to respond to the European football championship held in Portugal in 2004. She would work with the players’ football shoes that would be sent to her, as silent witnesses of an action, during a given period of time, of decisions made between mind and body. The artist received just one pair – golden – belonging to Cristiano Ronaldo. The colour of the football shoes suggested to Costa the pop imagery of the song Let’s Dance by David Bowie, underlining the displacement from the player’s physical exercise to an idea of movement as artistic gesture (dance). The work has two arenas: the field of a football pitch and the wooden floor of a dance studio. The formal realisation of her proposal followed the usually chosen path in her work, based on the duality and complementarity relations: the pair of images, left and right, front and back, and the mirror reflection of each. Costa continues the transgressive movement across borders, between fact/fiction, science/aesthetics, knowledge/emotion.

Maria do Mar Fazenda

Selected bibliography João Lima Pinharanda, in Portugal: Algumas Figuras/Algunas Figuras, Gabinete de Relações Internacionais do Ministério da Cultura, Lisbon, 2005. Leonor Nazaré, in On Reason and Emotion, 14th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, 2004.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 100 22/12/08 19:04:10 100 BESART / CECÍLIA COSTA 101 BESART / CECÍLIA COSTA

Cecília Costa

Maria do Mar Fazenda

Untitled (Isabel e Mariana), from the series Pli, 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 34 x 60.5 cm · Unique print + AP Untitled (Isabel e Mariana), from the series Pli, 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 34 x 60.5 cm · Unique print + AP

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 100 22/12/08 19:04:10 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 101 22/12/08 19:04:13 102 BESART / CECÍLIA COSTA

Let’s Dance, (pair 2), 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 80 x 100 cm; 80 x 205 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 102 22/12/08 19:04:17 102 BESART / CECÍLIA COSTA 103 BESART / CECÍLIA COSTA

Let’s Dance, (pair 4), 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 2 x (80 x 100 cm) · Unique print Let’s Dance, (pair 1), 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 2 x (80 x 100 cm) · Unique print Let’s Dance, (pair 2), 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 80 x 100 cm; 80 x 205 cm · Unique print Let’s Dance, (pair 3), 2004 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) · 2 x (80 x 100 cm) · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 102 22/12/08 19:04:17 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 103 22/12/08 19:04:25 104 BESART / TACITA DEAN

Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean (1965, Canterbury, United Kingdom) is one of the artists of a generation who currently enjoys extensive international recognition. She is mainly known for her 16 mm films on the passage of time – and the notions of ageing, memory and history. She focuses, or rather counter-acts, insistently on the culture of obsolescence that characterises our times. Many of her works result from a certain knowledge of situations or unexpected encounters, like the one that originated Baobab (I-VI) in 2001, and the film with the same title produced a year later but related to the previous work. Baobab is the common name given to Adansonia trees in Madagascar, which the artist visited when she tried to film a total solar eclipse. Fascinated by the six indigenous species found on the island, Dean created a series of black and white pictures that capture the strangeness and grandiosity of these giant trees, highlighting their anthropomorphic silhouette when seen from different angles. Her creative strategy is also based on the exploration of the specificities of the selected medium, using the symbolic connotations of the vocabulary of light/shadow as expressed by black and white photography. The artist intends to highlight the presence of the baobab during mythological times, but also their permanence throughout history, paying homage to the trees in an atmosphere of sensuality and melancholy that can also be found in other pieces of her photographic work, or even filmed or drawn. Dean usually selects subjects or issues forgotten in the stress of our daily life, selecting architectonic relics, superstitions or experiences that are then subjected to documentary and fictional devices. The title for her overview exhibition in Basel, at the Schaulager (2006), could not have characterised her artistic practice throughout recent years better: Analogue: Films, Photographs, Drawings 1991-2006.

Lúcia Marques

Selected bibliography Analogue: Films, Photographs, Drawings 1991–2006, Schaulager/Steidl, Basel/Göttingen, 2006.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 104 22/12/08 19:04:25 104 BESART / TACITA DEAN 105 BESART / TACITA DEAN

Tacita Dean

Lúcia Marques

Selected bibliography Analogue: Films, Photographs, Drawings 1991–2006, Schaulager/Steidl, Basel/Göttingen, 2006.

BAOBAB I (I of VI), 2001 Gelatin silver print · 93 x 127.5 cm · Edition 1/6 BAOBAB II (II of VI), 2001 Gelatin silver print · 93 x 127.5 cm · Edition 1/6

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 104 22/12/08 19:04:25 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 105 22/12/08 19:04:26 106 BESART / TACITA DEAN

BAOBAB III (III of VI), 2001 Gelatin silver print · 93 x 127.5 cm · Edition 1/6 BAOBAB IV (IV of VI), 2001 Gelatin silver print · 93 x 127.5 cm · Edition 1/6

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 106 22/12/08 19:04:26 106 BESART / TACITA DEAN 107 BESART / TACITA DEAN

BAOBAB III (III of VI), 2001 Gelatin silver print · 93 x 127.5 cm · Edition 1/6 BAOBAB V (V of VI), 2001 Gelatin silver print · 93 x 127.5 cm · Edition 1/6 BAOBAB IV (IV of VI), 2001 Gelatin silver print · 93 x 127.5 cm · Edition 1/6 BAOBAB VI (VI of VI), 2001 Gelatin silver print · 93 x 127.5 cm · Edition 1/6

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 106 22/12/08 19:04:26 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 107 22/12/08 19:04:27 108 BESART / THOMAS DEMAND

Thomas Demand

The photographs by Thomas Demand (1964, Munich, Germany) always follow a strict protocol: the artist usually starts by selecting an image taken from mass media, which is then transposed onto a three-dimensional paper model, always at its original scale. A large-format camera with a telescopic lens – to achieve a very high resolution – is then used to take a photograph of that carefully rebuilt replica. Lighting is always cold and uniform. The resulting images are exhibited frameless under Plexiglas. After being photographed, the life-size models are destroyed. According to the artist, who started his artistic practice with sculpture, ‘when the photo is taken, sculpture no longer matters, but photography is also not relevant [...] I never thought of my work as something that would culminate in simple photography.’ The images selected for replication are often related to the rise of dictator- ships, crime sets, connections between fascism and certain architecture. The viewer initially sees his photographs as records of such situations as associated to reality as any other. This belief fades once the photographs are observed more attentively. The high resolution of the pictures helps us detect all marks of arti- ficiality, denouncing the stage sets and objects as parts of the model: all logos are absent, books do not have titles on their spines, paper sheets are invariably blank, telephones have no numbers, not even keys. Finally, one sees that the detailed reconstructions are in many aspects radically incomplete. Comments on his work vary among those who see it as eminently self-reflexive, a comment on the particular nature of photography, and those who see his peculiar way of working, in which everything is determined beforehand. They see it as a form of fighting some ‘weakness in intentionality’, which is typical in photography, a medium in which the final result is unknown, at least traditionally, until the image is developed.

Ricardo Nicolau

Selected bibliography Thomas Demand. Processo Grottesco/Yellowcake, Progetto Prada Arte, Milan, 2007. Thomas Demand. Phototrophy, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2005. Thomas Demand, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2005. Thomas Demand, Skira, Milan, 2003. Thomas Demand, Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg, 1998.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 108 22/12/08 19:04:27 108 BESART / THOMAS DEMAND 109 BESART / THOMAS DEMAND

Thomas Demand

Ricardo Nicolau

Gangway, 2001 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) mounted on Diasec · 225 x 180 cm · Edition 3/6

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 108 22/12/08 19:04:27 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 109 22/12/08 19:04:28 110 BESART / PHILIP-LORCA DICORCIA

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

The photographs by Philip-Lorca diCorcia (1951, Hartford, CT, USA) alternate between public and private worlds and include members of his family, circle of friends as well as complete strangers. In the daily-life galleries he creates, the photographer prepares the stage for the photograph but allows for the final gesture to happen spontaneously during the shoot. In the Heads series (2000) those pictured walk through Times Square, apparently unaware of the fact that they are being photographed. DiCorcia and his camera are at a fixed distance and he has marked the pavement with a cross, marking the spot from which he is supposed to shoot. The upper bodies of his subjects, highlighted by a stroboscopic light, stand out against a dark background. The light used by the artist highlights the selected subjects separating them from the rest. DeBruce (1999) belongs to the series A Storybook Life and come to life because of a sense of anticipation that is provoked. Those portrayed are diCorcia’s son and niece quarrelling over a mouse. The photograph was taken to illustrate the concept of love for the 1000th edition of the French magazine Vogue. Marilyn (1990-92) belongs to the series Hustlers, carried out with support from a scholarship. It was motivated by life in New York in the 1980s, a time ruled by drugs, AIDS and discrimination against the gay community. Hustlers pictures male prostitutes but in most of the photographs this fact is not obvious. The main evidence is provided by the title of the pictures, which includes information on the amount paid, and the name and place of birth of the portrayed character. Marilyn is one of the most explicit images of the series since the subject is a transvestite. DiCorcia used the money from his scholarship to pay for the photo sessions, priced by the amount each male prostitute would charge for their ser- vices. From intelligently critical to a mechanism of subversion, this series raised interesting ethical and artistic issues. DiCorcia was awarded the Infinity Award for Applied Photography from the International Center of Photography in 2001.

Luísa Especial

Selected bibliography Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Steidl & Partners, New York, 2007. Thousand, Steidldangin, New York, 2007. A Storybook Life, Twin Palm Publishers, Santa Fe, 2003. Heads, Steidl, Göttingen, 2001.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 110 22/12/08 19:04:28 110 BESART / PHILIP-LORCA DICORCIA 111 BESART / PHILIP-LORCA DICORCIA

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Luísa Especial

Head #5, 2000 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) on Fuji Crystal Archive paper mounted on Plexiglas · 122 x 153 cm · Edition 10/10

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 110 22/12/08 19:04:28 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 111 22/12/08 19:04:30 112 BESART / PHILIP-LORCA DICORCIA

Philip-Lorca diCorcia DeBruce, 1999 Digital Chromogenic Print (LightJet Lambda Process) on Fuji Crystal Archive paper mounted on Plexiglas · 41 x 51 cm · Edition 9/10 MARYLIN, 28 Year Old, Las Vegas, Nevada, from the series Strangers, 1990-1992 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 39 x 57.5 cm · Edition 8/20

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 112 22/12/08 19:04:33 112 BESART / PHILIP-LORCA DICORCIA 113 BESART / RINEKE DIJKSTRA

Rineke Dijkstra

The Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra (1959, Sittard, The Netherlands) has portrayed children, teenagers or young adults ever since the beginning of the 1990s. Her photographic series seem to belong to the realm of the documentary, marked by sociological and anthropological observations, but they soon assume an aesthetic or formal reading. Through her preference for framing the subjects’ faces in close-ups or in half length or full length photographs, the artist seeks to directly and uniformly capture faces, but also the poses assumed by those participating in her documentary projects. By approaching youngsters in public spaces (on beaches, in parks and clubs), Dijkstra seeks to make a naturalist record – or an update of the notion of the portrait based on the western portrait tradition – of an extraordinary series of young people who, individually, announce the future of our society. The artist confesses: ‘I am interested in the paradox between identity and uniformity, the power of vulnerability in each individual and each group. That is the paradox I try to visualise concentrating on poses, attitudes, gestures and expressions.’ From eccentricities to the standardisation of behaviour and pose, those portrayed do not acknowledge that they are taking part in a sort kind of exhaustive iconographic archive on the youth that is witness to the transition between the second and third millennium. On the other hand, all literature on portraiture points towards psychological characterisation as one of its main attributes. Since face outlines or expressions prevail, a portrait is where the individual manifests their entire idiosyncrasy. Confidence, doubt, indifference, pride, sadness or hope are some of the psychological profiles that may be identified on a captured face, especially within the logics of the conscious and deliberate poses. Even when the subjects are presented in all their individuality as belonging to a specific group, as in the photographs of bullfighters, we understand that the psychology of their facial expression prevails, as the serialisation underlines their individuality, overriding any other reading on the specific identity of the group. By concentrating on the gaze of those portrayed, Rineke Dijkstra, in line with the tradition of portraiture, seeks an individual dignity that reaches beyond all everyday memories, past or future actions. Her works exercise their fascination as images of common human beings, in spite of the signs of their social and cultural differentiation.

David Santos

Selected bibliography Rineke Dijkstra and Bart Domburg: Die Berliner Zeit, DAAD Galerie, Berlin, 2001. Menschenbilder, Museum Folkwang Essen, Essen, 1998. Rineke Dijkstra, Beaches, Codax Publishers, Zürich, 1996.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 112 22/12/08 19:04:33 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 113 22/12/08 19:05:49 114 BESART / RINEKE DIJKSTRA

Vila Franca, Portugal, May 8, 1994 B, 1994 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 90 x 72.5 cm · Edition 3/6

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 114 22/12/08 19:05:51 114 BESART / RINEKE DIJKSTRA 115 BESART / RINEKE DIJKSTRA

Vila Franca, Portugal, May 8, 1994 B, 1994 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 90 x 72.5 cm · Edition 3/6 Montemor, Portugal, May 1, 1994 C, 1994 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 92 x 74.5 cm · Edition 3/6

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 114 22/12/08 19:05:51 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 115 22/12/08 19:05:52 116 BESART / WILLIE DOHERTY

Willie Doherty

Willie Doherty (1954, Derry, Northern Ireland) has adopted photography and video as his preferred means for developing artistic interventions, which bear witness to previous life experience in a society divided by religious and political issues. Many of his works are related to his hometown, Derry, a city which for over thirty years was a battlefield, ever since Bloody Sunday in 1972. His photo- graphically produced portraits show the fear and insecurity that have marked his view, along with his distrust towards mass media. When his career took off in 1985, it was with works that explored the complexity and indistinction of borders between perception and memory, truth and fiction, physical and imagined worlds, offering interpretations opposed to the official reading of the events that have affected Northern Ireland. At a more recent stage in his artistic production, Doherty has transcended political facts but continued to consider identity, memory and notions of truth, putting, above all, the way we remember our experiences and assess their degree of objectivity into perspective. In the five photographs of the Grey Day series, the artist maps everyday landscapes, producing black and white images that reveal the identity and particularity of these places, even though there is no human presence. Subtle compositional signs and notes like a line on the floor, a wall inside a house or a brick wall show marks and traces of ‘cultural’ configuration and ‘human’ land circumscription. Those photographs reveal the Northern-Irish condition in a physical and metaphorical manner, the artist’s own personal and group experiences and they lead us to sharing points of view and feelings on reality. Doherty’s work has been shown in various group exhibitions since the 1980s, simultaneously emphasising the growing interest for artists working with video. Among his most significant presentations in the international circuit, reference can be made to his participation in the Venice Biennial in 1993 and 2007, as well as the Biennial São Paulo 25th in 2003. Willie Doherty was nominated twice for the Turner Prize: in 1994 and 2003.

Sandra Vieira Jürgens

Selected bibliography Willie Doherty. Somewhere Else, Tate Gallery, Liverpool, 1998. Willie Doherty. Same Old Story, Firstsite, Colchester; Matt’s Gallery, London; Orchard Gallery, Derry, 1997. Willie Doherty. In the Dark, Projected Works, Kunsthalle Bern, 1996. Willie Doherty, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University, New York; Matt’s Gallery, London, 1993. Willie Doherty. Unknown Depths, Ffotogallery, Cardiff; Orchard Gallery, Derry; Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, 1990.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 116 22/12/08 19:05:52 116 BESART / WILLIE DOHERTY 117 BESART / WILLIE DOHERTY

Willie Doherty

Sandra Vieira Jürgens

Grey Day I, 2007 Gelatin silver print mounted on aluminium · 101.5 x 87 cm · Edition 2/3 Grey Day III, 2007 Gelatin silver print mounted on aluminium · 101.5 x 87 cm · Edition 2/3 Grey Day IV, 2007 Gelatin silver print mounted on aluminium · 101.5 x 87 cm · Edition 2/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 116 22/12/08 19:05:52 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 117 22/12/08 19:05:57 118 BESART / WILLIE DOHERTY

Willie Doherty Grey Day VIII, 2007 Gelatin silver print mounted on aluminium · 101.5 x 87 cm · Edition 1/3 Grey Day X, 2007 Gelatin silver print mounted on aluminium · 101.5 x 87 cm · Edition 1/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 118 22/12/08 19:05:58 118 BESART / WILLIE DOHERTY 119 BESART / STAN DOUGLAS

Stan Douglas

Since he started exhibiting in the beginning of the 1980s, Stan Douglas (1960, Vancouver, Canada) has become one of the most prestigious artists of his generation, having had his work exhibited at the Whitney Biennial (1995), at Skulptur Projekte Münster (1997) and the mythical Documenta X (1997) in Kassel. More recently his work was exhibited in Stan Douglas – Past Imperfect. Works 1986-2007, a major retrospective at the Württembergisher Kunstverein and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, in Stuttgart. Moreover, in 2008, Stan Douglas won the Bell Award for video art. As a photographer and video director Stan Douglas has skilfully incorporated one of the essential aspects of critical thought in the twentieth century: the articulation between cinema and psychoanalysis, the ultimate romantic couple. Their relationship, however, remains not very well understood although it is abun- dantly described. Like in a crime novel or in Freud’s Das Unheimliche, he finds coincidences in sequences: the first description of psychoanalysis was presented in 1896, shortly after 28 December 1895, when the Lumière brothers organised the first cinema session in history, screening their first films. A common lexicon was born: we speak of ‘projection’, ‘association’, ‘fragmentation’ and both fields are described with the same range of adjectives. But is cinema a metaphor for the unconscious or is the unconscious a metaphor for cinema? Stan Douglas places himself at the core of this issue. His films, especially Der Sandmann (1995) and Journey Into Fear (2001), are elliptical and fragmentary, formed by a jigsaw of allusions and references that always have missing pieces or to spare. Emulating the unconscious as a language, we are shown an expression of determination that is never resolved. In this sense photography becomes essential for understanding Douglas’s work. Determination resides in photography itself through image resolution and accuracy. Irresolution is also the irresolution of photography itself, the way in which a documentary image deceives meaning through its own self-evidence. That is why La Casa de la Moneda / Concert Hall, Habana Vieja and Las Siervas de Nuestro Señor (both from 2004) are documentary photographs that record, first and foremost, the poetic protagonist of the century of psycho-analysis.

Ana Pinto

Selected bibliography Stan Douglas – Past Imperfect. Works 1986-2007, Hatje Cantz, Ostﬁldern, 2007. Stan Douglas, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, 1999. Stan Douglas, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1994. Stan Douglas. Monodramas and Loops, UBC Fine Arts Gallery, Vancouver, 1992. Samuel Beckett. Teleplays, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, 1988.

Willie Doherty Grey Day VIII, 2007 Gelatin silver print mounted on aluminium · 101.5 x 87 cm · Edition 1/3 Grey Day X, 2007 Gelatin silver print mounted on aluminium · 101.5 x 87 cm · Edition 1/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 118 22/12/08 19:05:58 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 119 22/12/08 19:05:58 120 BESART / STAN DOUGLAS

Las Siervas de Nuestro Señor Convent Chapel/Manuel Bisbe Secondary School Library, Miramar, 2004 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) mounted on aluminium · 126 x 142 cm · Edition 3/7

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 120 22/12/08 19:06:01 120 BESART / STAN DOUGLAS 121 BESART / STAN DOUGLAS

Las Siervas de Nuestro Señor Convent Chapel/Manuel Bisbe Secondary School Library, Miramar, 2004 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) mounted on aluminium · 126 x 142 cm · Edition 3/7 La Casa de la Moneda/Concert Hall, Habana Vieja, 2004 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) mounted on aluminium · 122 x 139 x 6 cm · Edition 2/7

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 120 22/12/08 19:06:01 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 121 22/12/08 19:06:02 122 BESART / WILLIAM EGGLESTON

William Eggleston

Within the scope of photography’s recent history, the name William Eggleston (1939, Memphis, TN, USA) is practically unavoidable. When in 1976 New York’s Museum of Modern Art organised an exhibition with approximately 75 of his photographs, the artistic community soon revealed signs of division in relation to what would become a turning point for the future of this milieu: the exhibition was not only the high point in the slow and careful process of legitimisation of colour photography within contemporary art, but the apparent triviality of Eggleston’s subjects also stood in stark contrast with the persistent and restrict- ed idea of ‘dignity’ that still ruled the ethics of the photographic moment. Having started his activities at the end of the 1950s, Eggleston had in the works of Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson his most influential references. From Evans he retained a view on the iconography of place, its objectivity and clarity; from Cartier-Bresson he inherited the freedom of framing and fluidity, as well as a new notion of tonal range. When in the mid-1960s Eggleston started working with colour, both influences merged in the generation of a visual universe dominated by everyday aesthetics, expressive colour manipulations and the exploration of unconventional distances and angles. The Dust Bells (1965-75) series, formed by a selection of works created between 1965 and 1975, is a concrete testimonial of the technical and formal characteristics that made their author famous. However, perhaps even more importantly, this set gives us a sense of how the strength of Eggleston’s work resides in its serial character, through the way in which these images trigger an intimate relationship between their individual meanings – as if they are the unsorted chapters of a longer story. A story set up in a visual world without hier- archies and through the application of a ‘democratic gaze’. Among the numerous awards received for his work, the 1998 Hasselblad Award and the 2004 PHotoEspaña award are most significant.

Bruno Marchand

Selected bibliography Michael Almereyda, 5x7, Twin Palms, Santa Fé, 2006. Los Alamos, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Oporto, 2003. Mark Holborn, William Eggleston: Ancient and Modern, Random House, New York, 1992. Eudora Welty, The Democratic Forest, Doubleday, New York, 1989. John Szarkowski, William Eggleston’s Guide, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1976.

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William Eggleston

Bruno Marchand

Dust Bells 2 – Record Album in Rear Window, 1965-75 Dye Transfer Print · 72.5 x 55.5 cm · Edition 3/15 Dust Bells 2 – Woman Walking on Sidewalk, 1965-75 Dye Transfer Print · 72.5 x 55.5 cm · Edition 3/15

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 122 22/12/08 19:06:02 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 123 22/12/08 19:06:05 124 BESART / WILLIAM EGGLESTON

Dust Bells 2 – Light Bulb on Plywood Ceiling, 1965-75 Dye Transfer Print · 56.5 x 70 cm · Edition 3/15 Dust Bells 2 – Couple in Red Car at Drive-in Restaurant, 1965-75 Dye Transfer Print · 56.5 x 70 cm · Edition 3/15 Dust Bells 2 – Car and Bicycles in Garage, 1965-75 Dye Transfer Print · 56.5 x 70 cm · Edition 3/15

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 124 22/12/08 19:06:09 124 BESART / WILLIAM EGGLESTON 125 BESART / WILLIAM EGGLESTON

Dust Bells 2 – Child on Bureau, 1965-75 Dye Transfer Print · 56.5 x 70 cm · Edition 3/15 Dust Bells 2 – Light Bulb on Plywood Ceiling, 1965-75 Dye Transfer Print · 56.5 x 70 cm · Edition 3/15 Dust Bells 2 – Torch Café Billboard, 1965-75 Dye Transfer Print · 56.5 x 70 cm · Edition 3/15 Dust Bells 2 – Couple in Red Car at Drive-in Restaurant, 1965-75 Dye Transfer Print · 56.5 x 70 cm · Edition 3/15 Dust Bells 2 – Brown House in Sunshine, 1965-75 Dye Transfer Print · 56.5 x 70 cm · Edition 3/15 Dust Bells 2 – Car and Bicycles in Garage, 1965-75 Dye Transfer Print · 56.5 x 70 cm · Edition 3/15 Dust Bells 2 – Poster in Hallway, 1965-75 Dye Transfer Print · 56.5 x 70 cm · Edition 3/15

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 124 22/12/08 19:06:09 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 125 22/12/08 19:06:15 126 BESART / OLAFUR ELIASSON

Olafur Eliasson

The sense of experience effectively and naturally prevails in most of Olafur Eliasson’s (1967, Copenhagen, Denmark) work. The Danish/Icelandic artist seeks to oppose a corporeal experience in its sensitive totality to the retinal visuality and the interpretation based on meaning that prevails in western culture, deliberately avoiding everything that encourages a strictly interpretative relation. In the wake of James Turrell, Eliasson uses mainly light effects to open up a kind of spiritual experience that is not linked to the visual tradition but which, on the other hand, establishes the possibility of a sense of true harmony between us and the architectural or natural space that surround us. Therefore, climate, environment, light, colour, time and geography are some of the recurrent subjects in Eliasson’s creative work, often seeking the support of scientific research to establish his proposals. The visibility of his intentions gained an extraordinary dimension when he introduced The Weather Project in 2004 in the tall expanse of the turbine hall at Tate Modern, London. The sensory experience unchained by the immense disk of yellow light at the end of the hall, brought the viewer to another and more intense communicative dimension, simultaneously related to body and time, forcing many to stay within the influential space of the installation for far longer than a brief and simple observation. The desire to remain near the piece soon highlighted the effective power of attraction, which, unequivocally, called for it to be labelled sublime, a categorisation that is often evoked but in reality not often present in contemporary art. From another point of view, the work summarised Eliasson’s main aim: to scrutinise a sensory richness which has been substantially reduced since the Renaissance through the prevailing Euclidian visual paradigm. The set of twenty photographs that form The Hekla Twilight Series (2006) therefore confirms the procedural plurality of Olafur Eliasson’s art. The capturing of light and its variations, as an expression of a natural phenomenon, may result in generating a greater awareness of the effects of cosmic temporality in the viewer. ‘In general terms I came to the conclusion that light is much less intangible than I thought. Light is mostly physical; it has a body, not in a sculptural sense, but in a sort of subconscious sense,’ the artist has said. For him feeling the material power of light may truly result in a more fruitful way of internalising our humanity.

David Santos

Selected bibliography Your House, Library Council of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2006. Olafur Eliasson, Phaidon, London, 2002. Peter Weibel (ed.), Olafur Eliasson: Surroundings Surrounded: Essays on Space and Science, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001.

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Olafur Eliasson

David Santos

the hekla twilight series, 2006 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 20 x (30 x 40 cm); 145 x 240 cm (total) · Edition 2/6

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 126 22/12/08 19:06:15 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 127 22/12/08 19:06:18 128 BESART / MITCH EPSTEIN

Mitch Epstein

Mitch Epstein (1952, Holyoke, MA, USA) uses colour photography to show the ambiguity and banality hidden behind the landscape of public spaces and people’s gestures. Inﬂuenced by artists like William Eggleston and Gary Winogrand, and also by the study of painting, the artists gained recognition at the end of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s with a series of works dedicated to America and other photographs taken in places like India and Vietnam. One of the singular elements of his approach is the way real chromatic choices have been dealt with. In fact, for Mitch Epstein colour is a ‘way of seeing and an element which can be used to achieve emotional, psychological or aesthetic effects.’ The result of this conjugation can be seen in the series Recreation: American Photographs 1973-1998, in which colours may, or may not, mean inno- cence, abandonment or despair. The same applies to the images with livid colours from Family Business, a work about the bankruptcy of Epstein’s father’s business, exhibited in 2004 at the Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York. The two photographs presented here are part of the series American Power, which visually exploits landscape as a place marked by the relation between man and nature. These are images that show something beyond their apparent familiarity: a strange quietness evidenced either by the contrast between the bright red of the players’ equipment and the grey smoke from the factory (Amos Coal Power Plant, Poca, West Virginia), or by the abandoned whiteness of the helmets ready to be taken by darkness (Palm Springs, California). Presented in 2007 at Sikkema Jenkins & Company, American Power handles formal issues – the representation of landscape – and political – post 9/11 America – in a subtle and complex way. Mitch Epstein has also used ﬁlm and video in his work. In 2008 he was awarded the Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters from the Berlin American Academy.

José Marmeleira

Selected bibliography Mitch Epstein. Work, Steidl, London, 2007. Family Business, Steidl, London, 2003. Siddhartha Deb, FRATERNITY, Toluca Editions, Paris, 2006. Vietnam. A Book of Changes, W.W. Norton/DoubleTake, New York, 1996. In Pursuit of India, Aperture, New York, 1987.

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Mitch Epstein

José Marmeleira

Palm Springs, California, 2006 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 114 x 147 cm · Edition 1/6 Amos Coal Power Plant, Poca, West Virginia, 2004 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 114 x 147 cm · Edition 4/6

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 128 22/12/08 19:06:18 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 129 22/12/08 19:13:25 130 BESART / ELGER ESSER

Elger Esser

One could say that Elger Esser’s (1976, Stuttgart, Germany) work was influenced by two different, and apparently opposed, references. He was a follower of the Bechers in Dusseldorf, but his work also bears witness to the entire tradition of German Romanticism. The landscapes in his photographs are natural extensions of the landscapes by Caspar David Friedrich, such is the atmosphere and the mystery maintained in each of the images he creates. From the Bechers he learnt that, according to the fixation of the Romantic concept presented by Novalis, the most sublime sentimental intensity requires a method of extreme and merciless strictness. For the romantic, and Esser expresses that awareness, the creative gesture is a gesture of sacrifice as it is an act of analysis, decomposition and always of destruction. Esser’s gaze addresses what he calls ‘archaic places lost in nowhere’, but Esser’s nowheres are real locations with their own geography (all photographs include the location in the title). The archaic element in his work, sometimes expressed in an aesthetic belonging to the nineteenth century, concerns those places where sensitivity can be formed. They are landscapes where sensitivity gets to know itself, places where old feelings are discovered, and which Esser once again transposes to modern times. One could say that the most permanent movement of his works is that of displacement: from distant to closer, from back in time to the sensitive now, from archaic to the present. The large format he uses (181 x 242 cm or 400 x 282 cm, for instance) is the dimension necessary for us to dive into his photographs and transform those geographical places into precise locations of his sentimentality. It is true that Esser’s work is essentially based on landscapes, the great outdoors, nature. But it is also true that it develops its sentimental value through the movement made by the viewer in relation to himself. The greatness of Esser’s work relies therefore in the tension arising between the found landscapes recorded by the artist and the experience of the beholder.

Nuno Crespo

Selected bibliography Views – Pictures from an Archive, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2008. Cap D’Antifer. Étretat, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2002. Vedutas and Landscapes, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2001.

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Elger Esser

Nuno Crespo

Selected bibliography Views – Pictures from an Archive, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2008. Cap D’Antifer. Étretat, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2002. Vedutas and Landscapes, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2001.

Baie de la Somme, France, 2005 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) mounted on Diasec · 181 x 242 cm · Edition 3/7

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 130 22/12/08 19:13:26 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 131 22/12/08 19:13:29 132 BESART / HANS-PETER FELDMANN

Hans-Peter Feldmann

The archiving of culture and the appropriation of found materials, are some of the most relevant characteristics of Hans-Peter Feldmann’s (1941, Düsseldorf, Germany) artistic practice. Considered as a representative of the German art scene of the 1960s, the ﬁrst stage of Feldmann’s œuvre, realised between 1968 and 1980, is marked by the creation and the production of an extensive series of notebooks, small and large, produced through the treatment of apparently common black and white photographs, and the collection of letters, posters, post- cards or simple newspaper pages. This collector’s and archivist’s streak led him to work with other found materials, such as toys, and copies of classical sculptures in painted plaster, which he frequently produced in series. Feldmann used these objects as readymades, removing them from the context of their initial existence, showing a detachment from the conventional notion of authorship. Feldmann’s interest in antiques and his critical attitude towards the original production of objects leads him to inter- rupt his approach in 1980 to open a shop selling second-hand art objects. Ten years later, Feldmann would resume his artistic career to proceed with a practice anchored in issues directly related to the act of reproduction and appropriation of objects and images. Through the works in which he collects images from anonymous authors, Feldmann is considered a herald of the appropriation practices of the late 1980s. In his œuvre, one can also highlight the use of image manipulation and the exploration of creative processes based on deconstruction, deviation and interferences – for example, cuts – in the photographic plane, as applied in Two Little Girls, 2004, shown here. In this type of works, Feldmann also shows his interest in provoking and assembling complementary, enigmatic associations, which imply the continuous rehabilitation of the evocative strength of each image.

Sandra Vieira Jürgens

Selected bibliography Album, Walther König, Cologne, 2008. Hans-Peter Feldmann, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, 2001. Die Toten 1967-1993, Feldmann Verlag, Dusseldorf, 1998. Der Überfall, Wolfgang Hake Verlag, Cologne, 1975. Bilder, Galerie Paul Maenz, Cologne, 1971.

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Hans-Peter Feldmann

Sandra Vieira Jürgens

Two Little Girls, 2004 Manipulated print · 41 x 27 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 132 22/12/08 19:13:29 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 133 22/12/08 19:13:30 134 BESART / JOÃO PAULO FELICIANO

João Paulo Feliciano

Emerging in the late 1980s, João Paulo Feliciano (1963, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal) was one of the first Portuguese artists to use pop and rock music as material and reference for photographs, installations and videos. His artistic career, however, started with painting, which he soon abandoned in favour of working with industrial materials and dealing with issues related to minimalism and conceptualism. During the 1990s, the artist developed other formally focused solutions using semantic games between the words in the titles and the images in his works, creating a vocabulary that was as much playful as it was reflexive (on language, perception, experimentation), in which he not only referred to the realm of contemporary art, but also to the history and the imaginary of pop music. In 1994, his creative activities moved to other fields, such as multi-media production and graphic design (within the scope, for instance, of Studio Secretonix). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Feliciano returned to the art circuit with several solo exhibitions. Flow Motion Original Digital Files (2004) marks that moment and exemplifies the conceptual and sensorial attraction that light has for the artist: a fascination going back to the 1990s in works which specifically combined light and colour. It is a set of abstract images created by João Paulo Feliciano between 1999 and 2000, using fragments of digital images, manipulated in Photoshop. The materials from this work are the same ones used in the video Flow Motion (2004), although here the images are presented raw, not animated by manipulation and effects. Standing still, they defy perception in a game between photography and painting, colour and light. The work by João Paulo Feliciano created between 1989 and 1994 was the subject of a major exhibition in 2006 at Culturgest in Lisbon. In 2007, the Contemporary Art Centre in Cincinatti presented The Blues Quartet. This solo exhibition travelled to Coimbra, where it was shown at the Centro de Artes Visuais, and to Lisbon, at the Museu do Chiado – Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea.

José Marmeleira

Selected bibliography João Paulo Feliciano – The Possibility of Everything, Culturgest, Lisbon, 2006. Momentos de Luz, Fundação EDP, Lisbon, 2006. João Paulo Feliciano, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Oporto, 2004.

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João Paulo Feliciano

José Marmeleira

Flow Motion Originals, 2004 Inkjet print · 125 x 250 cm · Unique print

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 134 22/12/08 19:13:30 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 135 22/12/08 19:13:31 136 BESART / PETER FISCHLI AND DAVID WEISS

Peter Fischli and David Weiss

Ever since they met in the late 1970s, artists Peter Fischli (1952, Zürich, Switzerland) and David Weiss (1946, Zürich, Switzerland) have chosen simplicity and normalcy as their conceptual starting point, aiming to build up what they themselves define as an ‘encyclopaedia of personal interests’. Their body of work includes sculptures, polyurethane replicas made from objects found in familiar environments, such as the kitchen (Resteckfach/Divider, 1987) or the studio (Tisch, 1992/93), videos recording objects in a chain reaction (Der Lauf der Dinge/ The Way Things Go) or common situations, like a dentist’s appointment (At the Dentist, 1995), a visit to a cheese-making facility (Cheesemaking, 1995), or simply following the movements of a cat (Cat in Venice, 1995). This unique approach in the Swiss artists’ work is particularly relevant in their photographic production, in which, without any technical and professional concerns, they have gathered a large series of images taken during their city walks or during journeys they have made throughout the years in their home country and around the world. We are generally presented with photos of flowers, taken in their hometown and its surroundings, with double exposures, or natural landscapes with special effects in light and colour, which enhance the exotic and Eden-like nature of certain distant locations they visited either as artists or simply as tourists. These could even be images heralding the beginning of spring or summer used in advertising, with their high kitsch feeling, but in fact they are not. They are exercises of accumulation that show that artists’ daily interests and realities without any special relevance, highlighting the leisure characteristics that their interventions encompass. In addition to reflecting an attitude of complicity towards the banalities and causalities of the real world, they say the following about how they understand their artistic activity: ‘We look at the visible world.’

Sandra Vieira Jürgens

Selected bibliography Fischli, Weiss. Flowers & Questions: a Retrospective, Tate Publishing, London, 2006. Arthur C. Danto, Robert Fleck, Beate Söntgen, Peter Fischli David Weiss, Phaidon Press, London, 2005. Fotografías, Walther König, Cologne, 2005. Mundo Visível, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Oporto, 2001. Peter Fischli, David Weiss (XLVI Biennale di Venezia), Lars Müller Publishers, Baden, 1995.

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Peter Fischli and David Weiss

Sandra Vieira Jürgens

Untitled (Summer), 1997-1998 Inkjet prints · 5 x (74 x 107 cm) · Edition 7/9

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 136 22/12/08 19:13:31 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 137 22/12/08 19:13:47 138 BESART / PETER FISCHLI AND DAVID WEISS

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 138 22/12/08 19:13:50 138 BESART / PETER FISCHLI AND DAVID WEISS 139 BESART / PETER FISCHLI AND DAVID WEISS

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 138 22/12/08 19:13:50 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 139 22/12/08 19:13:50 140 BESART / ROBERT FRANK

Robert Frank

Robert Frank (1922, Zürich, Switzerland) emigrated to the United States after World War II. More than any other American photographer, Frank incarnates the modernity of the journey, the spirit of being ‘on the road’ and the image of another America, beyond the large economic recovery of the 1950s, marginal and altered. Robert Frank’s photographs have been subjected to profound changes since the 1940s, moving from the documentary nature of his black and white photographs to the production of seemingly acid and careless photography. Romantically opposing culture he has created an approach that goes beyond the limits of photography, settling in the general area of fiction, that has originated from the autobiographical. In 1958, Frank published his masterpiece The Americans, a giant panoramic overview of the United States, created from his dryly humanist and disenchanted view – similar to Jack Kerouac’s vision as featured in On the Road (1956). Frank started his career as a film director with the production of Pull My Daisy, an ex- perimental film (seemingly casual and informal) starring the key characters from the Beat Generation, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Another one of his famous films, which for legal reasons is not often shown, is the documentary on the Rolling Stones, entitled Cocksucker Blues (1971) an intense testimony about the universe of rock’n roll. The photographs included in this collection are part of different strands in Frank’s œuvre. The photograph from 1949 is part of his first mapping of America: it is a melancholic image of a person waiting in a diner, a jukebox in the fore- ground, waiting endlessly for the anno mirabilis that was 1950. The second photograph, composed from a set of photographs of his father’s coat, embodies Frank’s cinematographic editing methodology (used even for photography) in which he created situations that remind us of a personal, subjective and paradoxically universal universe. The coat was given to Frank by his mother, Rosa, when his father died in 1976, with the recommendation to wear it. Frank hung it by the window, close to his film cans and his Aloe plant. Later, he bought a soviet badge – an effigy of Lenin – which he sewed onto the coat’s lapel. Frank then used the coat during the New York winters as a renewed connection to his father. As such, cinema plays an essential role in Frank’s work, and subsequently in our contemporary understanding of the photographic image, either because of its fictional nature or because of its editing and cutting methods. The peculiarity of Frank’s long career is the way in which ‘straight photography’ is affected by the cinematic, fictional and autobiographic, which have been granted a transformation, often in a literary and narrative sense, into the field of contemporary photography.

Delﬁm Sardo

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Robert Frank

Delﬁm Sardo

Selected bibliography Robert Frank. Story Lines, Tate Publishing, London, 2005. Hold Still, Keep Going, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, 2001. The Americans, (1st edition, 1958), Scalo, Zurich, 1998 (6th edition). My Father’s Coat, New York City, 2001 Inkjet prints · 20.16 x 40.96 cm N.Y.C., 1949 Gelatin silver print · 28 x 36 cm

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 140 22/12/08 19:13:51 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 141 22/12/08 19:13:56 142 BESART / ANNA GASKELL

Anna Gaskell

In an interview with Massimiliano Gioni, Anna Gaskell (1969, Des Moines, IA , USA) stated that as a youngster she has read the books from the Choose Your Own Adventure collection countless times. At the end of each chapter the reader would choose one of the different possible endings and would thus influence the course of the story. Under the guise of innocent children’s fables, familiar at first sight, the photographs, films and drawings by Anna Gaskell hide fictions; they approach reality in all its strangeness and ambiguity. The artist’s mise-en-scène includes enchanting ingredients that become instantly perverse in her work. Attracted by cinema and inspired by literary texts, her work is not, however, an illustration or interpretation of the narratives that motivate it. Gaskell departs from such narratives to create environments and from there to create new episodes. They are, according to Nancy Spector, fictions of fiction. Time in Anna Gaskell’s photographs is mediated and fragmentary: they show different moments from an intermediate state without a prologue or a conclusion. The initial series wonder is based on the Alice in Wonderland novel. The two Alices, the set of twin teenagers, retain an aura of perfection through their beauty. The artist normally uses models or actresses, the ideal camouflage for bizarre events. In by proxy, the false tender gestures reveal menacing underlying attitudes. The series Short Story of Happenstance also derives from children’s stories and images from cinema and art history. Without a proper sequence the images do form a series due to the unnerving and mysterious environment and the large plans with foliage, inhabited only by an awkward character wearing a dress and black shoes. In 2000 Anna Gaskell was awarded the Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize.

Luísa Especial

Selected bibliography At Sixes and Sevens, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, 2004. Damien Sausset, ‘Anna Gaskell’, in Art Press, Paris, April 2004. Thom Jones, Nancy Spector, Caesura, PowerHouse Books, New York, 2001.

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 142 22/12/08 19:13:56 142 BESART / ANNA GASKELL 143 BESART / ANNA GASKELL

Anna Gaskell

Luísa Especial

Untitled #100 (A Short Story of Happenstance), 2003 Chromogenic Process (C-Print) · 181.6 x 256.5 cm · Edition 2/3

_BES ART_UK NOR.indd 142 22/12/08 19:13:56 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 143 22/12/08 19:13:58 144 BESART / GILBERT & GEORGE

Gilbert & George

Gilbert (1943, San Martino, Italy) and George (1942, Devon, United Kingdom) met in 1967 when studying at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, in London, and they have been working together since then as a single entity. Since the end of the 1960s they have been living in Spitalﬁelds, a neighbourhood in London’s East End, close to the City of London. The Singing Sculpture (1969) was the title of the performance with which the artists assumed themselves as a ‘living sculpture’ – literally, their life as art – and with which they presented themselves to the art world in the 1970s, fast gaining international recognition. Their ‘performance’ consisted of both artists, their skin painted in a single colour (sculpture), standing on a table (pedestal) singing a folk song about the daily life of two wanderers. The notion of ‘art for all’ is the driving force behind their art: work relating to daily life in a direct and accessible manner. Both artists state that all the subjects they wanted to deal with were found in the streets around their house and that the entire world (referring to the notion of Babylon) is condensed in those London streets. Concerns, issues and social taboos were simultaneously mixed with a questioning of artistic conventions, translated into a language that used performances, video, drawings and photography. Since the 1980s Gilbert & George have chosen to mainly work with large-size photography, with their self- representation always in dialogue with religious symbols, grafﬁti, excrements and newspaper headlines overlapping the images of their ageing bodies. The work Devout (2004) is represented in panels (which became their signature style) comprised of a grid of varying numbers, with large life-size colourful representations using primary colours. In this case, their focus, frequently repeated in their work, is the Christian religion, seen here from an ironic, problematic and parodying point of view – synthesising elements that arise from their approach.

Maria do Mar Fazenda

Selected bibliography Gilbert & George. Major Exhibition, Tate, London, 2007. Gilbert & George. Intimate Conversations with François Jonquet, Phaidon, London, 2004. Carter Ratcliff, Robert Rosenblum, Gilbert & George. The Singing Sculpture, Thames and Hudson, London, 1993. Gilbert & George. New Democratic Pictures, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, 1992. Gilbert & George. The Complete Pictures 1971-1985, Thames and Hudson, London, 1986.

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