Posted on
2014-06-11
Gil Heitor Cortesão has been interested in swimming pools for a long time – in the case of his works, at least since 2002 – as well as houses and interiors, both public and private. One can also state that the situations represented in his works tend towards the liquid state; that is, it is as if reality is subjugated to the painting itself and the latter ended up by contaminating it until its irremediable corrosion. Due to all this it perhaps may not be an exaggeration to state that this is a work about the end of the times, and is therefore eschatological. The way he applies the paint on the surface of each work – allowing it to run, using it to form stains, or also using it to create areas of great chromatic turbulence – reinforces the idea that the image represented is about to disappear, such is the feeling of dizziness transmitted by this aqueous dimension.
Gil Heitor Cortesão’s choice not to paint on canvas, wood or any other surface more usually chosen by the artists who work in the same medium, but rather to prefer to use acrylic, a transparent material, also allows him to reinforce the liquid dimension that emerges from his works. That which the spectator sees is almost always an image painted from behind the acrylic: the outer part, that which is closest to the observer, has never been touched by the paint, and this latter, under normal circumstances, will never be touched by the public, as it is protected by that membrane that is simultaneously transparent and opaque, front and back, beginning and end of each instant represented there. Francis Bacon’s idea to place glass in front of his paintings, a manner of simultaneously distancing the spectator from and bringing them close to the work, may here be called up, as, in the case of Gil Heitor Cortesão, his option for acrylic seems to have more to do with his desire to question the status of the image itself and its intention to set itself up as absolute truth – hence the fact that his representations are on the edge of decomposition, as if it were no longer possible to extract anything else from them other than the sight of their implosion.
Opposite – Lost Summer 1, 2013
Exhibition runs through to July 26th, 2014
Galeria Pedro Cera
Rua do Patrocínio, 67 E
1350-229 Lisbon
Portugal
www.pedrocera.com
