Jason Dodge, Katie Paterson, Rui Costa, Ellen LeBlond-Schrader,
Joana Serrado, Hélène Breschand and Jean-François Pauvros
29 September–10 November 2012
World premiere of “… pour ainsi dire …”: 29 September, 10pm
A concert by Hélène Breschand and Jean-François Pauvros
Archaeological Museum
Sociedade Martins Sarmento
Rua Paio Galvão, 4814-509
Guimarães, Portugal
Curated by Silvia Guerra
Co-produced with Guimarães 2012 European Capital of Culture
The exhibition Metaphoria is a European project born out of a dialogue between Silvia Guerra and the late Portuguese poet Rui Costa (1972–2012) on the possible meaning(s) of metaphor today.
“An exhibition can be born out a single word. Or from a desire to think of how poetry, one of the literary forms most entrenched in the history of a country such as Portugal, enables a nation to preserve its unconscious and to preserve its dreams when they are slipping away. Poems can sometimes live in our memory, but how might they open an area for thought in a museum.
It is the job of the curator not only to render the work visible or readable, but to organize a sensitive, emotional path between the works, restoring to the visitor the experience of his associative power, of his imagination. Poetry can be born from artworks, when, wordlessly, they create an opening, a ‘passage.’ The adventure begins when the explanations end—when we venture to penetrate into mystery.” (Silvia Guerra)
Metaphoria will bring together a site-specific piece by Jason Dodge that are experienced with a simple movement on the part of the viewer, like a poem without words; several installations by Katie Paterson that transform the artist’s horizon into a metaphor and project the visitor to the realm of moonlight and gamma rays; poems by Ellen LeBlond-Schrader that submerge the visitor in the precise moment when one thing becomes another; poems by Joana Serrado that present the world as a mineralization process and waste of saudades; ” … pour ainsi dire …”; and the world premiere of a concert by the composers and musicians Jean-François Pauvros and Hélène Breschand on the electric guitar and the harp respectively; The duration of this exhibition is extended through a book in which these same artists and authors figure, and the reader can thumb through its pages as though moving between the different terms of a poetic reconciliation. In addition to this, readers will find a meditation by François Prodromidès, on what’s Europe the metaphor nowadays. Prodromidès’ reflection invites the reader to return to see what is written and to bump up against the very surface of the word from which the exhibition grew.
Recalling that in the streets of Athens today, one can see removal trucks bearing the name “μεταφορές” (Metaphor), Rui Costa wrote:
“A box arrives. (You have filled it with objects from your old house. Objects you would like to have in your new house.) You know the box could be empty—emptiness is a box so small it cannot be seen—or could contain an even bigger box. In the case that the box within the box is really big, it is called the universe. It is not possible for the box to contain exactly what you placed in it—you say, but no one can explain to you what it takes to transform that into a work of art.”
Lab’Bel, Laboratoire Artistique du Groupe Bel, is a research platform for contemporary art, directed by Laurent Fiévet and supported by the Bel Group.
