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To the Studio (Corner #1)

2019-20

To the Studio (Corner # 1) is the first of several performative actions that integrate The Prague Actions performed during the artist's stay in the city. A figure is positioned in the corner of the studio of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague where the author was at the time. It was intended that the positioning in the corner of the studio began with the 9th Symphony of Beethoven and ended with its end, placing the figure standing in front of the white walls that made up the corner of the studio over an hour long. The action starts from the interest in the studio and its role in a foreigner who still knew little about the country, people and customs, in general, the place where he was. The placement of the figure in the corner of the studio would pose a series of questions about its recent positioning in the city, as well as in the respective functions to which the studio is normally associated with. However, there is something Uncanny in the documentation made. You hear the noises of the studio colleagues watching the performance event (?), and you see the figure, motionless, in the corner without moving, listening to the symphony ... Did the action happen? Does the performer as a figure really finds himself in the corner? Asking these questions is directly linked to the presence of a figure that appears to be a silhouette, an imprecise mass, something immobile as if it were a mannequin, an inanimate object positioned or abandoned in the corner. Putting the hypothesis that the event in the studio took place, but without confirming it, the video takes the form of a specter, an identity that, like the theater, assumes itself as the 'visibility of the invisible'. It is in this uncertainty and emotional effect that the action and works intend to operate. To see the video, in this case, is not to see the performance, nor the reality, it is to see the means of access to an event that would not be possible to be seen except through that same means. The reality of the action lies between the real and the fictional, and what happened in the Academy's studio is shrouded in mystery and rumors.

To the Studio (Corner#1) - Protocol drawings, 2019-20

Mixed media on various papers, photographs, texts, prints and sketchbook

Variable Dimensions

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To the Studio (Corner#1)

Video frames of the performative act 

Akademie výtvarných umění v Praze, Prague, Czech Republic, November 12th, 2019

(4:3, 1’05’59’’, colour, c/sound, loop)

Props: Nine sheets of paper with duct tape and 9th Symphony of Beethoven

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Blank, 2019

Photographic documentation

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No canto (silhueta), 2020
Acrylic and gesso on paper

99,6 x 52,5 cm

Solo Exhibition Passagens por terras de ninguém, Museum of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, PT

To the studio (Corner#1) - Installation view, 2020
Solo exhibition 
Passagens por terras de ninguém, Museum of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto

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(Corner), 2020
Steel, enamel and plaster
200 x 45 x 44 cm

Solo Exhibition As Ações de Praga, Fundação Bienal de Arte de Cerveira, PT

To the Studio (Corner#1) - Installation view 2021

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