Date: 2022
Author: João Silvério
What to do? Synthesis and subjectivity
Martim Brion presents us with a series of sculptural works that move from the three-dimensional format to photography to text and, in terms of composition, to a formal strategy grounded in abstract geometry that establishes balanced patterns between scale and proportion within a colour palette characterised by great rigour and economy. The reference to the series, as both a model and a methodology for his work, is based on two lines of inquiry:
The first is situated on a synthetic plane and is characterised by economy and austerity in the use of reflection and the necessary means; the resulting work forms part of a lineage that corresponds to the memory and study of art history, drawing on Neoplasticism and a minimalist practice. In this process, the artist draws out similarities and affinities derived from the construction of simple forms of Euclidean geometry found in sculpture, interweaving them within the photographic image with fragments of recognisable yet decontextualised objects and devices.
The second proposal unfolds as a sufficient condition of language to determine a field of possibilities that refers to a form, a dimension, a colour, an idea or a hesitation, describing the characteristics of a hypothetical work yet to be created, but which exists only as a written expression of the artist’s thought. However, this is already a procedure of a sculptural nature that reveals a logic of the object’s construction, yet one that depends on a question of moral autonomy: what is to be done? This simple question, unfolding into various propositions, confronts us with the doubt that arises in the moment preceding – and subjective to – the carrying out of an objective action, and thus its materialisation in the world we share. In other words, in the face of the doubt—of Cartesian origin—that forms the premise of this exhibition, another arises: what is seen? It is in this context, between reflection and gesture, that the artist develops a linguistic game which does not negate the aesthetic dimension, working with colour and the composition of the graphic design of the sentences, with different variations in a long series entitled ‘Descriptions’. These works chart a critical and dialogical path between Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language and the conceptual practices of the twentieth century through the manipulation not only of the word but also of each individual letter, evoking the world of the typesetting workshop in the use of each type as a sign that conveys a specific symbolic and visual value as part of the compositional process. All the texts that make up these determinations are set against a background of the same dimensions, thus constructing a matrix that replicates a model regardless of the number of characters or words in each text, in a modular procedure that we can associate with the fragmentary construction of his sculpture, incorporating the colour palette as if it were a formal proposition.
In two works from this series – two examples of subjective questioning that engage the viewer – we are confronted with the following statements: in the first, entitled ‘Descriptions 10’, beneath a blue rectangle, we can read the following: ‘COLOUR – SIMPLE AND DIRECT’; and in the second, ‘Descriptions 19’, ‘Just look at it’. On the face of it, these two simple and concise phrases convey nothing more than the obvious fact they describe. To put it simply, in the first example, the colour is simple and direct, and the description is based on this. In the second example, it urges us to observe what we are presented with in the presence of the object. These tautologies, or apparent redundancies, aim to reconfigure our perception, under the guise of a form of questioning that is not without a certain critical irony, which compels us to remain vigilant regarding the conditions of possibility that constitute us. The ethos to which we are subject, and which determines us, in confrontation with language and the polysemy of meanings to which we are called.
The photographs, organised into series, follow the same methodology in their indexing; under the title ‘Repetitions’ or ‘Read Series’, they present themselves to the viewer as ways of interpreting fragments of objects and devices that we vaguely recognise, and which take on an aesthetic and luminous dimension, with a distinctly pictorial plasticity. In this linguistic and formal complexity, the exhibition is a conceptual construction that is not limited to the series presented here, because it reconfigures, within the artistic process, a fundamental question of the human condition. What is to be done?
And in the presence of the works, what are we seeing?
Martim Brion 