DIAPASÃO: Manuela Pimentel and JAS
After being presented at Camões - Portuguese Cultural Center, in Luanda, the exhibition Diapasão can now be seen at the Angolan branch of THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE in the same city.
Do not miss the opportunity to see or review the joint production of this artistic duo!
“Diapason”, from Greek roots “dia”, which means “through” and “pasōn”, which means “all”, suggests something that transposes, that traverses several realities. It also defines the device that allows determining the frequency of vibration of sound waves, serving as a tuning resource and as a mechanism to debug, purify and temper sounds.
The term is appropriate to designate this show that Manuela Pimentel and JAS present. Two artists who, although cultivating separate artistic practices, can be understood here as parts of a two-headed body, which is articulated in unison. Their creativity, so often synchronized, has resulted until today in more than a decade of exhibition collaborations that explored themes dear to each one.
This condition of artistic partnership acts as a fundamental factor in their individual artistic production, resulting in a non-shared aesthetic and, simultaneously, a deep poetic affinity.
On one hand, a work of scenic and syncretic character, in the style of tile and ephemeral art from the 17th and 18th centuries, where Manuela Pimentel cumulatively incorporates the language and materiality of mural art and contemporary street art. It inscribes in it a traditional iconography and a reinvented repertoire that leads to the creation of a personal pictorial discourse as a counterbalance between the idea of appropriation and conceptual redefinition.
On the other hand, “Black Forest”, a work with meditative contours, which is structured through the woodcut technique and the repeated practice of monochromatic oil drawing on raw paper and canvas, where JAS creates a visual game of articulation between reliefs and depressions, that foreshadow the idea of “resonance”. A gestural construction, produced through elements that lead us to an expression of the informal poetics of valuing visual effects.
The term Diapasão that presides over this exhibition suggests a synthesis image between these two artists and the declaration that both are easily distinguishable.