JOSÉ LOUREIRO – OURIÇOS
2013-10-21“Today, I limited myself to a single, wide and long red brushstroke. A workload only akin to the twelve Labors of Hercules. These brushstrokes bring to mind big ships with excess weight at the bow, risking sinking as soon as they set sail but finally managing to go their way.” I wrote these lines in a recent (and lengthier) email to a friend of mine, telling him about what I was doing. If I start by quoting my own words it is because they accurately describe the way I’m now working.
Each one of these brushstrokes arises from a particular place, different from all others, and the dimension they acquire essentially depends on the ballast of pigment and oil they carry within. Black is important because it behaves as a catalyst; for example, as it tangentially approaches a red, it intensifies it, rendering it redder. This red – I could have used any other color in this example – is more intense at its center and diffuse at its margins, almost forming a halo. Apparently immobile, these colors fluctuate and never really touch each other, even when they overlap.
Color and brushstroke are a single entity, inextricable. As such, there is time and duration, beginning and end. It is between these two points, and in a scale ranging from disaster to epiphany, that everything is played out. Colors are served in tubes we can buy at the store. We open one of these tubes and become ecstatic with what we see. Only later we understand that colors are like sharp ramparts, so closed in upon themselves that they can only be taken by storm, and with immense effort. We don’t even have exact names for them; despite the fact that they’re always so impeccably labeled. Having one color, we just need to change its place so that it’s no longer the same. Colors communicate between them in an indecipherable code, impervious to the most powerful algorithm. They are as slippery as eels, and sting like urchins. We’ll never discover the Rosetta Stone of colors.
José Loureiro
Exhibition runs through to November 13th, 2013
Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art
Rua Santo António à Estrela, 33
1350-291 Lisbon
Portugal
