«Gaps, rifts and other artifices» at Travessa da Ermida Project Lisbon, Portugal

04.12.2021—15.01.2022

curated by João Pinharanda

« Rui Macedo’s paintings tend towards invisibility. (…) Between what is externally real is and what is painting, Rui Macedo tends to introduce not an approximating lens, not an interpreting filter, not a reflecting mirror, but a thin film that reinterprets Duchamp’s notion of inframince in order to sabotage it.

(…) Meanwhile, we have already passed through the small chapel where the artist has entered to offer us the vision of the possible hidden by reality. We are intrigued by the banality of the industrial and modern tiles that cover the floor of the chapel: firstly, because they are not in keeping with the global aesthetic language of the space (Baroque), and secondly, because they run up one of the side walls. Rui Macedo's painting has never been about showing the impossible, and yet this new stage in his work presents us with a dilemma: The painting, which offers itself as a floor to be inadvertently stepped on, assumes the status of an ordinary object; but when it continues towards the wall, like the remnant of the space for which it was conceived, it immediately (and not in a different moment) dismantles the illusion it seemed to intentionally lure us into, leading us into the realm of fiction - in other words, with these two apparently contradictory moments, Rui Macedo's painting emphasises the extraordinary place it has long occupied due to its manufacturing qualities and the complexity of its concepts.»

João Pinharanda, excerpt from the catalogue essay., 2021

  • The solo exhibition "Gaps, Rifts, and Other Artifices" curated by João Pinharanda, was held from April 12, 2021, to January 15, 2022, at the Travessa da Ermida Project in Lisbon, Portugal.

  • January 18 | 6pm
    Talk and guided tour of the exhibition with Rui Macedo and João Pinharanda.
    Free entry

  • On the occasion of this exhibition, it was published the catalogue «Gaps, Rifts, and Other Artifices» (PT/EN) with an essay by the curator João Pinharanda.

  • João Pinharanda (1957, Mozambique) holds a degree in History and a Master's in Art History. He is currently the Artistic Director of MAAT: Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia. He curated the Portuguese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2017) and has organized several exhibitions at prominent institutions, such as the Serralves Foundation, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, and the Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Museum, among others.

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