This publication documents the exhibition Rural Topographies that took place simultaneously at the Galeria Quadrum, between December 8, 2019 and February 23, 2020, and at the Galeria Diferença between December 8, 2019 and February 8, 2020, featuring works by Alberto Carneiro, Ana Lupas, Lala Meredith-Vula and Claire de Santa Coloma. This volume contains texts by Tobi Maier, Irene Buarque, Catarina Rosendo, Bernardo Pinto de Almeida, Marina Lupas Collinet, an interview with Lala Meredith-Vula, the transcript of a conversation between Claire de Santa Coloma, Catarina Rosendo and Tobi Maier, the reproduction of an interview/self-portrait by Carneiro produced for a 1979 publication of Galeria Quadrum, as well as Alberto Carneiro’s exhibition history in the two galleries where Rural Topographies was on view.
“His [Alberto Carneiro] Operação estética em Vilar do Paraíso (1973), triggered my impulse to exhibit a group of three artists in analogy with Carneiro at Galeria Quadrum. I like to think of their work as positions in a network, as interrelated positions that call attention to ecological concerns, potential signifiers within a global discourse and calls to (poetical) actions within the natural environment.”
– Tobi Maier
“in his [Alberto Carneiro] dynamic drawings we feel from the slight register of the wind to the perfume of the flowers.”
– Irene Buarque
“These words are also intended to highlight the importance of memory and attributing value to who we are collectively. If, in its semantic origin, the entire curatorial act implies the intention of caretaking, everyone working in the artistic milieu shares the responsability of a continued and collective effort to preserve what we consider essential in defining ourselves in the present.”
– Catarina Rosendo
“So, in the case of Carneiro’s art practice, each work fosters an encounter throught the sensation of a comprehensive conception of sculpture. This offers an experience through which one could access the sensorial reinvention of the body. Thanks to the work, this experience has now become a space that is open to the poetic understanding of the surrounding world.”
– Bernardo Pinto de Almeida
“I always say that wood arrives at my studio in one way or another. I always end up working with the wood that is native to the place where I live. Wood has a relationship to the people I meet and to the country where I live.”
– Claire de Santa Coloma
“Lupas detects the metalinguistic forms of art – the performance – and articulates the poetics of her artistic works at the juction between the experience of the world and the formation of the subject in modern times. What is primordial is not the one who executes an action (the Subject), but the action itself (the Verb).”
– Marina Lupas Collinet
“I consider myself as a total artist at least when I am photographing the haystacks. I zone out and try to be led by my emotions and seek to capture an emotional response to my encounter with the haystacks.”
– Lala Meredith-Vula