For this project at Appleton Square in Lisbon, artists Jacobo Castellano (Jaén, Spain, 1976) and Noe Sendas (Brussels, Belgium, 1972) work together. From an idea of dual work, with four hands, which is born as an joint experiment. An adventure that arises from the interest, the admiration and the curiosity of both as artists, bringing their it to the fusion: an articulation, a meeting, a conjuncture, so precarious as absolutely admirable. "Experiencing boundary situations and existing are the same thing," says Karl Jaspers. "We become ourselves by entering with open eyes into the boundary situations."
Jacobo Castellano's works explore areas such as personal and collective memory, games, pain and violence. He works with materials close to hand, and with some historical content. He made his public debut as an artist since the late 1990s. His childhood memories are the raw materials boiling at the core of his creative process. The evolvement shown is merely a natural result of Castellano’s perseverance, of his readings that support and feed such a process, and of his critical contemplation of the common and apparently simple objects of real life, rendered different by his way of looking at them. However, his progress has neither been linear nor continuously upward-bound. Castellano’s path as an artist unfolds as a spiral, unceasingly touching back to objects from the past and to stages left behind, but each time with a new visual approach – which makes him grow as an artist. Because he won’t do anything “just to get things done”, to fill time, or to deliver work. Jacobo Castellano’s work is grounded on a consistent and coherent vision that he applies to his oeuvre, thus providing it with support and explanation. This attitude brings honesty to his artistic activity, as he ranks gradual growth above immediacy, haste and urgency.
Noé Sendas (born in Brussels, 1972, lives and works in Berlin) began presenting his work in the late nineties. He resorts to different means of expression: video, sculpture, collage, drawing and photography. Explicit and implicit references to artists and literary, cinematic, or musical creations are part of his raw materials. Specific concerns about the reflection and practice of visual arts can also be added to his repertoire. These include: the body, as an entity that is simultaneously theoretical and material; the observer's perception mechanisms; or the discursive potential of exhibition methods. As a result the Berlin-based Belgian artist's work is weirdly unsettling. Rooted in cinematic and literary references, his images depict ghostly, unnerving figures whose heads and limbs appear to be invisible, or which habe seemingly blended into furniture or walls. It is a fascinating body of work, that follows themes of abstracting and partly erasing the human body through photography explored by those ever-present titans, John Baldessari and Guy Bourdin, and the less well-known but equally brilliant American sculptor Robert Gober. It is also something of a counterpoint to the contemporary subversion of John Stezaker's collaged appropriation of Hollywood head shots, whose results are very different but who delights in defacing once-great screen idols.
Jacobo Castellano's works explore areas such as personal and collective memory, games, pain and violence. He works with materials close to hand, and with some historical content. He made his public debut as an artist since the late 1990s. His childhood memories are the raw materials boiling at the core of his creative process. The evolvement shown is merely a natural result of Castellano’s perseverance, of his readings that support and feed such a process, and of his critical contemplation of the common and apparently simple objects of real life, rendered different by his way of looking at them. However, his progress has neither been linear nor continuously upward-bound. Castellano’s path as an artist unfolds as a spiral, unceasingly touching back to objects from the past and to stages left behind, but each time with a new visual approach – which makes him grow as an artist. Because he won’t do anything “just to get things done”, to fill time, or to deliver work. Jacobo Castellano’s work is grounded on a consistent and coherent vision that he applies to his oeuvre, thus providing it with support and explanation. This attitude brings honesty to his artistic activity, as he ranks gradual growth above immediacy, haste and urgency.
Noé Sendas (born in Brussels, 1972, lives and works in Berlin) began presenting his work in the late nineties. He resorts to different means of expression: video, sculpture, collage, drawing and photography. Explicit and implicit references to artists and literary, cinematic, or musical creations are part of his raw materials. Specific concerns about the reflection and practice of visual arts can also be added to his repertoire. These include: the body, as an entity that is simultaneously theoretical and material; the observer's perception mechanisms; or the discursive potential of exhibition methods. As a result the Berlin-based Belgian artist's work is weirdly unsettling. Rooted in cinematic and literary references, his images depict ghostly, unnerving figures whose heads and limbs appear to be invisible, or which habe seemingly blended into furniture or walls. It is a fascinating body of work, that follows themes of abstracting and partly erasing the human body through photography explored by those ever-present titans, John Baldessari and Guy Bourdin, and the less well-known but equally brilliant American sculptor Robert Gober. It is also something of a counterpoint to the contemporary subversion of John Stezaker's collaged appropriation of Hollywood head shots, whose results are very different but who delights in defacing once-great screen idols.