– 10.04.2011
This exhibition consists of six paintings by Michael Biberstein, four sculptures by Rui Sanches and, in an unprecedented way, a work made in collaboration by the two artists.
The landscape genre has long been at the center of Biberstein’s work. His paintings have explored the sense of space associated with Man’s relationship with the natural environment, informed by the tradition of landscape painting in both Western and Eastern cultures.
Here Biberstein’s works appear particularly atmospheric, but maintaining a very peculiar tension between the revealed space(s) and the materiality of the pigment on the linen canvas surface.
Rui Sanches has been presenting, in his recent works, wooden constructions combined with other materials, where different processes are used to obtain three-dimensional shapes. These pieces usually have more or less explicit references to traditional genres of Western art: portrait, landscape and still life. Frequently, references to the various genres appear simultaneously, complicating a clear distinction as to which one prevails at a given moment.
In these pieces, Sanches places greater emphasis on landscape references, understanding the landscape as a construction, where memory and fiction play a very important role. The piece produced in collaboration, which carries the same title as the exhibition, Aqui e Além, is, in essence, a device/refuge to see a landscape that is a painting. In this work, we are led to question the relationship between art and reality and the limits and intersections of each of these categories.
– 10.04.2011
