Fitografias

Raul Mourão

From Sep 14 to Oct 27 2007

The box has no bottom. The table has no top. At first it was stone, wood and iron. Then came the industrial laminate. Blue, yellow, green and red. Four colours all around, shirts and walls. Iron is left out, and so is stone. Now it's 80 kg. Wood stays. The missing image will come. Music plays on my earphones. The magician's suitcase, the clown's nose. She 's my age, but looks a little older. She has a big butt and thick legs. She's wearing a blue skirt and a white wool sweater. Her hair is tied up on the top of her head. She carries the beach chair, which she just bought. She waits for the next train in the subway station of Cantagalo. Where there is a connection between Copacabana and Lagoa. On the TV: floods, storms, and inflation. Stock markets are doing fine, 2000 patients affected by the strike of health professionals. Super-crowded airports, emergency plans, vulnerable areas. The night is a pregnant child, walking barefoot down the street towards me. The medications are expired. I read yesterday's newspaper. Live load. Hours lost. The streets of São Cristovão and Arpoador. Everything goes by quickly. The sun dries the sea salt. The skin peels off. Zero privacy, the State and the corporations control everything. Your last call, your purchases. Your debts. The water inside the fruit. The energy of the soundtrack. Woodworkers never seal the insides of drawers so that the smell of cedar doesn't contaminate the clothes. A work will take down part of the town. Tomorrow they'll remove the debris. In a typical winter morning in Oslo, two men jumped out of a car, walked down to the National Gallery, positioned a ladder under the window, broke the glass, and took away The Scream, by Edvard Munch. The opening of European Winter Games was going on at that time. In Rio, during Carnival, in 2006, a group of thieves stole four canvases by Matisse, Picasso, Monet and Dali, at a total value of US$ 50 million. There is no relationship between one robbery and the other. This is a movie. Everything can happen.

Making it clear: an art exhibition can be the meeting of thoughts and things. Alone in the studio: ideas, experiences, trials and errors. I walk around the neighbourhood looking for a subject matter. I photograph each neighbour everyday. I occasionally get it right. 1:30 am, I'm tired, I'm gonna sleep well.

Raul Mourão