shop window paper

 

 

 

“The shadow in itself”

 

“Here is enough and more than is necessary about Painting. It would be convenient to associate it to modelling. Also using earth. The potter Butades of Sicyon was the first to discover the art of modelling clay portraits; this has taken place at Corinth, owing his invention to his daughter, who had become in love with a youngster [quae capta amore iuuenis]; the latter was about to leave to a foreign country so she circumscribed [circumscripsit] with a line the shadow of its face projected it at the wall by the light of a lantern [lucernam]; her father applied clay on the sketch, making a relief hardened by the fire like the rest of his ceramics, after having dried it; this work of art, it’s said, was preserved at the Nymphaem until the time of Corinth’s foray by Mummius.”

 

*Pliny the Elder, Natural History, book XXXV, translation by Tomás Maia, at Assombra, Assírio & Alvim (Publisher), 2009

 

We may start by Pliny, and the legend of Painting’s origin but this is just the beginning and there is no designated arrival point. I start with Pliny, as he has continuously made me company, but I leave the path opened. This is a reading I always come back to, and each time I read or remember it, new images arise, always in a different manner. It’s a fruitful reading. From where the images arise. If in the cartoons previously presented, the girl prints the profile of a youngster on the clay itself, neglecting the steps of drawing and filling with clay the inscription on the wall, in the work shown at “A Montra”, the clay was previously applied as a projection plan, and the drawing exists as light, it is never inscripted, there is no line scratching the surface. It’s an almost ghostly drawing because the drawing of the shade is never materialised, there is no friction of the scratching material against the surface, this drawing, this image is achieved by the light illusion of our eyes. You can’t grab, you can’t touch. Almost spectral. The painting here, as an opaque plan is not evoqued, it’s rather a translucid plan where the drawing is projected, which is also not an inscription because it’s light and shadow that clinically forms an image closed in itself. There is evidence of the perpetuated image. Butades’ daughter, aiming to perpetuate the presence of the youngster (body’s absence), has appealed to the creation of an image (projection’s presence). The image, images, transform the absence into present.

 

The shadow is present in many of my painting and drawing works but only as a representation. This is the step for shadow and light’s independent existence and it was an attempt of miming into a pictorial reproduction its condition. If I frequently return to Pliny and to this story, it’s not for aiming to illustrate the text but, from it to give light to new images that are centred in this dichotomy of absence/presence, which is may be the images’ essence because they recall, suggest, cherish and also terrorize. By deliberately omitting and changing the gestures described by Pliny, in the cartoons the modelling is not made from the light but rather from the contact with the material (clay); in the work that is presented here at “A Montra” (shop window) the drawing is not an inscription, it’s light.

 

 

 

Tiago Baptista

 

Lisbon, 13th of Setember of 2014