Perceptions and Movements
Exhibition text by Constança Babo, curator, 2024Perceptions and Movements
Galeria Presença
Perception and movement determine the way we experience others, things, space, time. lnscribed in the art sphere, they influence, transform, and shape the creative and productive, the receptive and aesthetic experience domains. Within the trajectory of contemporary art, reflecting on optical perception and movement leads to op art and kinetic art, the primordial artistic movements of those two fields of action. However, perception and movement cross all the art sphere. The perceptual stimulus and the optical illusion are triggered through countless forms, practices and expressions, and the movement is equally processed in different ways, occurring either on the artwork side, or on the spectator's side. lt is within this framework that the current exhibition lies, aiming to summon and, to some degree, reactivate the territories shared by the two artistic references. Although, it is not limited to them both and, on the contrary, its aim is to develop and adopt broad and current discourse and approach.
Recognizing the unavoidable centrality of those two references, as well as, especially nowadays, the digital and virtual technologies, equally relevant and preponderant in both visual and motor fields, perception and movement cross all the art sphere. The perceptual stimulus and the optical illusion are triggered by colours, shapes, volumes, overlaps, and juxtapositions, among others, and the movement appears in different ways, sometimes being effective, that is, through an artwork in motion, or occurring on the spectator's side, through an observation and a reception processed through moving the eye and the body.
The exhibition Perceptions and Movements emerges, therefore, from the intention of summoning and, to some degree, reactivating the territories of action and expression developed and shared by op art and kinetic art. However, the historical temporality as much as the formal, visual, and plastic particularities of the two artistic movements are recognized. Therefore, although this curatorial project adopts them both as a starting point and as a background, it is not limited to their specificities. Rather, it proposes and develops a broad and current discourse and approach.
Conceived as a group exhibition, it features artists who use different colours, shapes, materialities, volumes, geometries, sound, film, and mechanical processes. From Galeria Presença, the artists Diogo Pimentão, lsaque Pinheiro, Lia Chaia and Marisa Ferreira, and three others invited, Carlos Mensil, Angelika Huber and David Magán.
The works of these artists form an exhibition that although being hybrid, seeks to be revealed and received as a unified configuration in which objects dialogue, encounter, and confront each other. From here, the aim is to create equally multiple aesthetic experiences, in an articulated, cohesive, and lively cadence.
Constança Babo (Porto, 1992) has a PhD in New Media Art and Communication from Universidade Lusófona (2023), a master's degree in Art Studies - Art Theory and Criticism (2016), from Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto, and a degree in Visual Arts - Photography (2014), from Escola Superior Artística do Porto. Her main area of research is new media art and curating. She collaborated as a research fellow in the international project Beyond Matter at Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe, and as a researcher in the MODINA project, at Tallinn University. She publishes art reviews as well as scientific articles.
