{"id":1315,"date":"2024-09-02T21:46:54","date_gmt":"2024-09-02T21:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catarinapintoleite.com\/?p=1315"},"modified":"2024-09-15T02:29:11","modified_gmt":"2024-09-15T02:29:11","slug":"palimpsesto-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.catarinapintoleite.com\/en\/palimpsesto-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Palimpsest 2024<\/span>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"

D. Quixote and Dulcinea
Oil, beeswax and oil on Japanese paper – 120x130cm<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

The Matter of Painting<\/em><\/p>\n

by Jos\u00e9 Sousa Machado<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cListen<\/em><\/p>\n

to the fragile brightness music leaves<\/em><\/p>\n

as it burns in the dunes<\/em><\/p>\n

once, I was that sand\u2019s precarious light (\u2026)\u201d[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The title of Catarina Pinto Leite\u2019s exhibition at Galeria S\u00e1 da Costa \u2013 \u201cPalimpsesto\u201d<\/em> [Palimpsest] \u2013 is evocative of a common practice among medieval copyists: the erasing of manuscripts written on parchment or papyrus in order to write a new document or correct sections of pre-existing text.<\/p>\n

The similitude between Catarina Pinto Leite\u2019s present paintings and collages and the palimpsest \u2013 i.e. employing the same support to write a succession of texts \u2013 results from their processual common ground, in terms of using already finished works as supports for the creation of new ones.<\/p>\n

Roughly two years ago, she showed at Galeria Diferen\u00e7a \u201cRua de m\u00e3o \u00fanica\u201d, an installation in which visitors walked between translucent veils of Japanese paper that hung from the gallery\u2019s ceiling, suggesting a street flanked by fluttering walls with varying degrees of transparency. After the closing of the exhibition, the installation was dismantled, and Catarina Pinto Leite reused the sheets of Japanese paper to create the paintings and collages shown here, working in a way akin to the palimpsest copyists to produce what we may call \u201cfigural palimpsests\u201d.<\/p>\n

The installation\u2019s dismantling returned the paper to its original organic quality, once disconnected from the exhibitive concept; however, on the other hand it added to it a number of indelible traces of its previous use: a variety of thicknesses and textures, a watery translucence, an irregular rugosity, the deep creases left by crumpling, various casual or deliberate tears and overlapping sheets. It was on these materials so rich in history, experiences and memory that the artist now chose to work, painting them with Ecoline watercolours, oil paint and beeswax \u2013 rather than on some neutral matter, lacking the present materials\u2019 biographical richness, which the viewer does not know, but nonetheless senses.<\/p>\n

During the passage from the first to the second stage of this long creative process, the artist\u2019s gaze evolved naturally from an initial speculative and conceptual scheme to a poetic and allegorical discourse on the nature itself of matter in painting. Moving through this eminently poetic dominion, while combining harmonies, chromaticism, rhythms and evanescent shapes free from any obvious representational purpose, Catarina Pinto Leite explored then the sensitive qualities of her materials, freed from the restraints of reason, as is usually the case with poetry and music. Like poetry \u2013 seen here as the essence of language, as a metalanguage \u2013 these pieces by Catarina Pinto Leite touch the limits of language, that which has yet to be named. Giorgio Agamben wrote about this in \u201cThe Idea of Matter\u201d, stating that \u201cwhat we reach is obviously not a thing so new and awesome that we lack the words to describe it; it is, rather, matter, in the sense in which one says, \u2018the matter of Britain\u2019 [\u2026] Where language stops is not where the unsayable occurs, but rather where the matter of words begins\u201d \u2013 an undefinable substance that pulses at the root of what exists, \u201cwhich the ancients called silva (wildwood)\u201d, a pure preBabelian language that sings in unison with poet Antonio Delfini\u2019s lines:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I finally reach the poem,<\/p>\n

Sleep is beginning to reach you;<\/p>\n

May my song be to you<\/p>\n

Like a dream in your night.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Eug\u00e9nio de Andrade, \u201cLimiar dos p\u00e1ssaros”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Matter of Painting by Jos\u00e9 Sousa Machado   \u201cListen to the fragile brightness music leaves as it burns in the dunes once, I was that sand\u2019s precarious light (\u2026)\u201d[1]   The title of Catarina Pinto Leite\u2019s exhibition at Galeria S\u00e1 da Costa \u2013 \u201cPalimpsesto\u201d [Palimpsest] \u2013 is evocative of a common practice among medieval […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publicacoes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catarinapintoleite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catarinapintoleite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catarinapintoleite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catarinapintoleite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catarinapintoleite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.catarinapintoleite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1360,"href":"https:\/\/www.catarinapintoleite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions\/1360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catarinapintoleite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catarinapintoleite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catarinapintoleite.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}