EN

For its participation at Condo 2018, hosted by Sadie Coles HQ at The Shop, Madragoa is delighted to present Approx., an exhibition that brings together works by Rodrigo Hernández, Renato Leotta, Gonçalo Preto, Buhlebezwe Siwani, and Belén Uriel.

The project reflects on the mutual relationship between subject and matter, revealing an imme- diate proximity in which the body, or its gesture, settles on the surface of the artwork. Traces of this attempt at recording human features, lands- capes, objects or actions are impressed on the matter itself that, like a thin skin, adheres to the object of representation and immediately trans- lates it into a new shape. These practices lead to a convergence of subject and media, even to an inversion, in which the material itself and the process of making become the actual subject of the work, otherwise invisible.

It is the case of Renato Leotta’s TEMPO (Luna del ghiaccio) (2017), that captures in a photogram in silver gelatin print the image of the surface of the sea by immersing the photographic paper directly in the sea water during a night of a full moon. The photogram has been obtained without the use of any photographical instrument, but by means of transforming a whole specific landscape into a “camera obscura” and fixing an image, frozen in time, of the ephemeral vision that we would see if we opened our eyes underwater. The artist’s research is about testing reality without having a pre-existent answer and in a way allowing the natural landscape – time, water, paper, salt, light and gravity – to represent itself without ad- ditional structures.

In Buhlebezwe Siwani’s installation, amaKhobokha (2016), protagonist is a particular kind of green soap that in South Africa is used for many purposes: to cleanse one’s clothes but also one’s body and the digestive system. The bowls in which traces and residues of soap are accumulated are multi-functional objects, used only by young women to bathe, wash clothing, store food. The soap has solidified in the bowls look like a stain, an encrustation, that evokes by contrast the act of washing and purifying the body.

The glass sculpture Untitled (braço) (2017) by Belén Uriel comes from the recent project Descanso, in which the artist focussed on some constituent elements of furniture shaped to accommodate the human body and that, through their forms and curves, maintain a strong relationship with the body. The actual armrest served as a cast for the glass sculpture, that faithfully reproduces the object’s shape, including the traces of its use, and imperfections due to wear and consumption. An isolated element, detached from its usual context and function of physical support to the body, the armrest is converted into a fragile, transparent item which in turn needs a support.

The same lightness and transparency characterize Maxcanú (2015) by Rodrigo Hernández, a bas-relief work installed on the wall, halfway between sculpture and painting. Made of a thin milky white, modelled layer of crystal-clear polyurethane, the bust of Maxcanú discreetly protrudes in the space, where it is almost invisi- ble. Inspired by traditional masks, in particular by death masks, typically obtained by a wax or plaster cast of a person’s face, the features of this bust are synthetic, almost geometric, and abstract, transforming it into the man’s proto- type often present in the artist’s imagery.

Gonçalo Preto’s background in traditional pain- ting techniques led him to experiment through interventions on the support – paper, board or canvas – by applying various layers of gesso and glue, or scraping the surface in order to ob- tain verisimilitude effects with the real subject. In the painting Peek-a-boo (2018) showing the image of a head in a glass jar dipped in formalin, several types of visual effects coexist, like a su- perimposition of layers or filters. Every different material represented – the wall in the backgrou- nd, the translucent and curved surface of the jar, the light reflected on the glass, the density of the fluid, the mirrored image of the room – become a device for a more vivid and comprehensive view of reality.