"38.711901 -9.150882 earth atlas after the end map #2B" and "And brought from the jungle the silence before the storm"

by Ana Leonor Madeira Rodrigues | Sebastião Castelo Lopes

Impressions

"The impressions create the final maps that trigger a possibility of perception or a commotion.
These maps are a paleontological premonition.
By accepting the concept of the atlas and the map as a switch between the observer and the observed, they become verbal proximation, letting go of the noun.
Thus, they are not the crystallization of existence; they are not even a memory; they represent nothing, which signaled the affliction of that nothing.
The maps of the earth after it's gone build a substitute entity, a premonition, that is, its atlas.

The project, which started in 2018, and developed mainly in an artist residency between 2020/2022 in Makeeindoven (Eindhoven, Netherlands), has had phased presentations:
In February 2020, the Atlas of the Earth after the end of the world, plate1, map #1 showed Edifício Arte Contínua, in Oeiras, the matrix plate and the printout of map #1.
In September 2020, Plates, plates and prints, at Galeria Passevite, in Lisbon, were shown, folded, maps #1, #1A, #1B, #1C, #1D, #2, #3, #4 and # 5, and silicone plates #2, #3, #4, #5, #6 and #7.
In March 2021, Mapa #2, at Galeria na Montra, in Oeiras, showed the silicone matrix and the printed variants #2A, #2B, #2C, #2D, #2E and #2F.
The present exhibition includes the large enlargements of map #2B, its matrix plate and respective printing, and 32 plates from the atlas.
In September 2022, the entire project will be exhibited in Eindhoven, at Albert van Abbehuis, in the Netherlands." Ana Leonor Madeira Rodrigues

drawing| installation

A set of works on paper and wood fill the gallery space. Paper, charcoal, acrylic paint and wood are the raw materials from which the construction time of this set of works can be guessed. Traps and cages, slyly inhabit this “jungle”.
A set trap is a potential pain, it’s something so aggressive and violent that we feel hurt just by looking at it. Before making blood flow, the trap already injures you just by looking at it.
And the trap captures, forces to stop, takes away freedom. The trap is camouflaged, appears harmless, deceives. The trap may not be seen, it may be disguised. If so, everything has the potential to be a trap because everything can be a trap in disguise. A trap disguised as a jungle, a trap disguised as silence, and so on. Everything has the potential to capture, to take away freedom, to open a bloody wound, to hurt in sight.

But what if falling into the trap isn't worse than being out of it? The character Death, of the book Death at intervals by José Saramago, also believed that staying in his office was better than going out to the world of the living. But it was in the house of a cellist that it became flesh and blood. Only when Death saw the score of Bach (Suite no. 6 in D Major, BWV 1012) did it gain weight. Maybe we are wrong, maybe entering the traps gives us weight, substance. Let us then do as António Proaño, the character in The Old Man Who Read Love Stories by Luis Sepúlveda (from which the title of this exhibition was taken) and walk through these works attentive to all the sounds, the smells, the breeze, as if we were walking through the El Idílio Jungle.