WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND
ARBAG (LISBON)
20-04.2023 > 08.05.2023
ARBAG (LISBON)
20-04.2023 > 08.05.2023
We were once told by our friend Laura that a straight line is a small
portion of an infinite circle. Looking back on this, her advice can be
applied to practically any context, any emotion, to a single word or
gesture, as if it were a universal way of looking at life. At the time she
didn’t mean anything special, it was just chit-chat bar talk, but it stayed
in our thoughts.
A circle is a simple object that can become a thousand things: an orange, sheep poop, various types of cheese, the moon, a bubble coming out of a fish’s mouth. And this, in succession, is as ironic or comical as circles themselves! A circle can be a sign of hopefulness, courage and prosperity. It gives shape to crowns, gongs, plates of plentiness and joy. In turn, the circle can become a sort of perversion, encapsulating repetitions and reiterations of routine and reverence and replication and more. A circle can be a trap, a nonsensical decline into the infinitiness of any given moment or scenario. A circle never ends, or starts, or halts, or slows down.
A circle is also a blank mind, empty paper, unscribbled canvas, a bubble of thought that overflies the heads of characters in comics as they think or speak. Every circle holds in itself the possibility to be filled, transformed, occupied. It exists as itself and as its interchange with its surroundings.
And so, for these reasons, we found it to be the perfect image to inaugurate a new art space in Lisbon. An ideal, bubbly, curvy spot to circumscribe some of the most fizzing emerging voices of the Portuguese scene.
Please, follow us into our communal orbit of creations! Various circles occupy this space and represent multiple reality-atoms that constitute a bigger cell. A cell that at some point becomes a body, whose anatomical multiplication fills this world, a planet of beings
and matter that occupies the galaxy. A circle, a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
Let us suggest to you:
We live between and within cycles, routines and rhythms that define us as humans on earth... A space that is also a circle, or is it really...? Let’s not question too much of our existence. Here is the exercise we propose to you:
look around this room and consider, which one of these works represents a love circle? or a playful sinuosity ? or a confused recapitulation ? a joyful repetition ? a desperate reinterpretation ? an unchanging dream? a slip second
of eternity? or all of the above?
We can go on for hours on this circular conversation, and then again.
and again and again
and again
André Santos Martins, Bárbara Bulhão, Eva Gaspar, Francisca Aires Mateus, Gonçalo Preto, India Mello, Lulú, Mónica Coelho, Pedro Barassi, Primeira Desordem, co-curated with Victoria Alvarez
A circle is a simple object that can become a thousand things: an orange, sheep poop, various types of cheese, the moon, a bubble coming out of a fish’s mouth. And this, in succession, is as ironic or comical as circles themselves! A circle can be a sign of hopefulness, courage and prosperity. It gives shape to crowns, gongs, plates of plentiness and joy. In turn, the circle can become a sort of perversion, encapsulating repetitions and reiterations of routine and reverence and replication and more. A circle can be a trap, a nonsensical decline into the infinitiness of any given moment or scenario. A circle never ends, or starts, or halts, or slows down.
A circle is also a blank mind, empty paper, unscribbled canvas, a bubble of thought that overflies the heads of characters in comics as they think or speak. Every circle holds in itself the possibility to be filled, transformed, occupied. It exists as itself and as its interchange with its surroundings.
And so, for these reasons, we found it to be the perfect image to inaugurate a new art space in Lisbon. An ideal, bubbly, curvy spot to circumscribe some of the most fizzing emerging voices of the Portuguese scene.
Please, follow us into our communal orbit of creations! Various circles occupy this space and represent multiple reality-atoms that constitute a bigger cell. A cell that at some point becomes a body, whose anatomical multiplication fills this world, a planet of beings
and matter that occupies the galaxy. A circle, a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
Let us suggest to you:
We live between and within cycles, routines and rhythms that define us as humans on earth... A space that is also a circle, or is it really...? Let’s not question too much of our existence. Here is the exercise we propose to you:
look around this room and consider, which one of these works represents a love circle? or a playful sinuosity ? or a confused recapitulation ? a joyful repetition ? a desperate reinterpretation ? an unchanging dream? a slip second
of eternity? or all of the above?
We can go on for hours on this circular conversation, and then again.
and again and again
and again
André Santos Martins, Bárbara Bulhão, Eva Gaspar, Francisca Aires Mateus, Gonçalo Preto, India Mello, Lulú, Mónica Coelho, Pedro Barassi, Primeira Desordem, co-curated with Victoria Alvarez
