A trio show of  Manuel Fonseca, Sebastião Borges, and Vicente Mateus, on the artist-run space ‘aDrogaria’, Porto



- Sound piece created by Vicente Mateus created specifically for the show.

2022

gargoyle, 2020-2022
White marble sivec, ash wood
22x12x18 cm

enxertação, 2021-2022
White marble sivec, aço inox, plexiglass
64x21x18 cm


Don’t look back or you freez... ,2020-2022
Estremoz white marble, aço inox, ash wood
53x19x32 cm

Rarízes(roots+varicose veins), 2021-2022
Estremoz marble,
73x28x19 cm


Death ringers, 2021-2022
Rosa aurora marble, painted iron, ash wood
53x20x17 cm


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This Project began based on the potential relationship between the artists and how the inherent premises of their work could relate with one another. A collective inner search to merge three different individual languages into a common space; a physical, limited, singular space. When you are working collectively towards an unified goal, someone needs to take the first step. One of the first ideas of this project was to capture the sound of the noisy stone factory where I produce my work. The experience of being routinely strangled by that metronomical noise gave me awareness over certain subtleties it carried. I thought Vicente could capture and work with said sound. I know that ideas are only ideas and, in this specific case, his own artistic process led him to other lands. On the other hand, these starting points are always fundamental to intertwine the processes. I understood that I could make a structure that worked as a device, in order to integrate a sculpture of mine and the speaker. After this realization, I tried to create a symmetry between two spatial galleries, based on redesigning my workbench and an old, left-off table counter which was already on the drugstore.

Most of the pieces that I showed were part of a family of sculptures, that I had slowly developed beforehand and concluded for the context of this exhibition. This narrative developed was crucial for the construction of the sculptures.
The sculpture under the table (Rarízes) - which was the only sculpture made for the exhibition - was projected to be up the table with a drawer below, but I realized in montage that my model did not work in reality for several reasons. I realized that I needed to exacerbate the intimacy of the sculpture and the negative space under the table fulfilled this task by giving it a sense of voluntary hiddenness.