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PAST Exhibition | ||
| Exhibitions: Past Exhibition - 'The size of what I see' | |||
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Michael BrickThe Size of What I See Paintings and prints around the work of Fernando Pessoa14 September - 21 October 2006
"Sometimes on days when the light is perfect
and precise, Does a flower really have beauty? Yes, even I, who live just from living, How difficult it is to be oneself and see only what is visible!" (Fernando Pessoa as Alberto Caeiro from "The Keeper of Sheep")
"Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym Alberto Caeiro wrote poetry using language that is resolutely non-poetic, using no metaphors or similes, few adjectives or adverbs and absolutely no engagement with metaphysics, the sublime or the mystical. Caeiro provides us with a modernist, coherent, if utopian, programme through which we can understand the world, a way by which we can understand the truth of ourselves. In particular he (Caeiro) warns us against making connections between things where none exist. So it is important that the prints in this collection are not intended as illustrations to the poems; rather the poems are intended to act as a set of instructions, a manual, for looking at the work. Each image, though part of the same family and therefore in dialogue one with another, is to be viewed individually and uniquely, not as part of an imagined whole. This notion of detached connectedness exists not only between the prints and the poems, but also in the prints and paintings themselves. Although paintings, the language used is non-painterly. There is no engagement with ideas of creativity or self-expression. The issues relate to uniqueness and plurality; presence and absence, completeness and partiality. In the making and structuring of the work each piece uses a simple self-generating geometry. They make themselves and in so doing become more than just formal exercises. What poetry or beauty there is, that is present in these images resides not in the works themselves, but in the mind of you the viewer." Michael Brick
Fernando Pessoa Fernando Pessoa was born in Lisbon in 1888. At the age of five he moved to South Africa returning to Lisbon when he was seventeen. He was a poet and writer who earned his living as a commercial translator. He died of cirrhosis in 1935 having published little during his lifetime. The American critic Harold Bloom, in his book "The Western Canon", described Pessoa as the most representative poet of the 20thC. Alberto Caeiro was one expression of Pessoa's unparalleled originality, namely that of the creation of the heteronyms. The heteronyms, which numbered over thirty including four fully-developed ones [Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis and Fernando Pessoa himself or ele-mesmo] were different poetic selves, with different biographies, attitudes, beliefs and, above all, with absolutely distinct poetic voices. In this Pessoa anticipated many contemporary aesthetic concerns, such as the radical effacement of authorship. Alberto Caeiro, acknowledged by the others, including Pessoa himself, as their "Master", was a unique creation: a non-thinker, a believer in the redundancy of reasoning, and the upholder of the desire not to think, merely to look and see. Writing of Caeiro, Pessoa said "He sees things with the eyes only, not with the mind. He does not let any thoughts arise when he looks at a flower...the only thing a stone tells him is that it has nothing at all to tel! l him. The stupendous fact about Caeiro is that out of this sentiment, or rather absence of sentiment, he makes poetry". In Caeiro's work the language is resolutely non-poetic, using no metaphors or similes, few adjectives or adverbs and absolutely no engagement with metaphysics. Caeiro provides us with a coherent, if utopian, programme through which we can understand the world. He warns us against making connections between things where none exist.
Untitled 5, 2005 oil on panel 31 x 62 x 6cm
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Doublesquare
2, 2005 oil on panel 122 x 61 x 6cm