On May 3rd, at 4 pm will take place at Quadrado Azul Gallery in Oporto, the latest solo exhibition of José de Guimarães: Tattoos - Recent works.
José de Guimarães | Tattoos
Nuno Faria
A tattoo is an ambiguous symbolic practice: distinctive in some cases, and segregating in others. José de Guimarães has often integrated this element in his work as a symbol of community belonging and trace of cultural resistance, particularly in the last few years with the extensive series of monotypes, "Negreiros", which is now expanded and enhanced in an intense dialogue of black on black, positive/negative and copy/original.
Now, departing and intervening on a notorious newspaper article by the historian José Pacheco Pereira, the artist draws attention to the present, giving tattoos a clear political approach. Note that semantic levels are subcutaneous ("beneath the skin"), going deeper than the visually striking theme would predict. Beyond the forefront political commentary, José de Guimarães labors at the level of image construction and reproduction, using the medium extensively beyond its own visuality, a metalinguistic plan which holds on to the potential of transferring contact made images.
As it was possible to witness in the anthology exhibition dedicated to the processes of image transfer, open January to April in CIAJG in Guimarães -, contact is an operative concept in the work of José Guimarães that sets the tone of this exhibition. José de Guimarães underlines here a practice intensely based on the appropriation of elements from other cultures, with which we maintain multisecular contacts, pursuing an aesthetically permeable work, mestizo and anthropophagic.
Returning to the solo exhibitions in the context of Portuguese galleries after a long absence, José de Guimarães brings us an intervening and questioning exhibition, attentive to the socio-political context, which might surprise those who never stopped to see this disquieting pulse, palpable to the surface of your objects.
