– 22.12.2024
Tratado [Treatise] is an exhibition centred on portraits of family members and friends of José M. Rodrigues. The photographs unveiled also relate to the places where they were taken, the nature surrounding the subjects, the landscape as their backdrop. Mostly as yet unseen works in colour, a video made up of an anthology of images, a collection of mirrors; many stories emerge from these moments where artist and model share the same purpose: the eternity of a second.
The exhibition can be described as a treatise on friendship and the beloved, along the lines of the text written by the Catalan Ramon Llull in the 13th century:
With his imagination, the friend painted and reproduced the features of his Beloved in corporeal beings, with his understanding he perfected them in spiritual beings, and with his will he adored them in all creatures.
Each photograph functions as a verse; each snapshot establishes the kind of relationship José M. Rodrigues has with the subject (the portraits, another kind of a treatise). The negotiation involves choosing a place and, together, these places make up a very personal and sentimental geography: the Atlantic – the Mediterranean.
The mirror, which reflects, distorts and speculates, is an omnipresent object in this new set of photographs. Faces and bodies contemplate themselves and are contemplated by the gaze of José M. Rodrigues, who also seeks the horizon of the maritime landscape as the balance point of the image.
The cinematographic and pictorial dimensions of the snapshots are also evident. They could be stills from an auteur film or paintings by an 18th-century master. Above all, they are images of such clarity, lucidity and physicality that we feel close to José M. Rodrigues’ friends and loved ones.
In Tratado, we see the work of a photographer in his maturity. In a moment, that which is closest to us becomes the most urgent to show. Nothing matters more than love and friendship, the blue of the sky in communion with a sea as shallow as the ground, a flower hiding the face of a loved one who has passed away. This exhibition is full of joys and sorrows. Life in all its splendour.
– Óscar Faria, curator
– 22.12.2024
