Albuquerque Mendes, “Jugglers – Problemas e Insolvência”

“These very rare and blessed people maintain a pure, unadulterated, open look. The unburdened eye is in a position to see, to enjoy, to possess, to create. Perhaps the strength of Albuquerque’s work resides in this.  Perhaps for this very reason he is able to transform the banalities of daily life into a permanent, ritualized re-encounter with beauty. ” (Armando Azevedo, 1979)

We are in an empty room with a spotlight shining on the center.  A man draws a line to limit space.  There, the man begins to paint.  In this exhibition by Albuquerque Mendes (Trancoso, 1953), we perceive the artist’s obsessive iconographic path.  Performance is evoked as painting.

Everything here is condensed into a pictorial offering, in which the body of the artist is conflated with the body itself, and vice versa.

Faces and ghosts emerge through worlds where anything is possible and everything must have an answer.   The question is to solve the riddles of jugglers and acrobats.  The stage itself is the portrait.  After all, it is merely a face painted white with the dust of stars.

This levity is affirmed in contrast through the bitterness of the painting’s geometric horizon. These profane memories are inhabited on the screen.

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