BIRTH CENTENARY
1923 - 2023
Opening September 16, 4 pm
Exhibit commemorating the centennial of Fernando Lanhas' birth
My father was born on 16 September 1923
and died in 2012 at the age of 88. Nothing is eternal, as we know. A few days ago, I came across a photograph
of the 1923 LeMans motor race, the year of his birth. It was a sepia-toned,
washed-out, coarse-grained and unclear image of a forest area at the race. We
often measure time by the quality of a photograph. I was touched by the fact that the picture
was taken in the year of my father's birth - but the idea of "a long time
ago" wasn't due to the date of birth, but to the quality of the image. The
nostalgic idea that remains for those who come after the image was taken is
that that time was grey or sepia, such is the number of images that
"prove" this.
Let's just take a photo of the forest
today. If we want, the image is now also from 1923. Or from 1763, or 1278, or 234 BC...
After all, light is eternal, as is time.
That light and those colours are still there today. This photo is not from
1923, but the light and colours have not degraded since 1923. It's the record that wasn't good.
Fernando Lanhas "the painter",
who never saw himself as such, searched for colours for his paintings that
wouldn't change over time, the colour of dust that is the end of everything,
the colours of stones that remain until it is sand, and then trails off into
the air just like dust. He also wanted his painting to be as natural as a tree,
to the point where you could walk past it without looking. This has something
to do with painting, but not much... and it is not because this is not just a
painting exhibition, it is more than that, it is a way of marking the centenary
of the birth of someone who helped me to think, someone who led me to look at
many mundane issues in a particular way.
My father.
The material on display is what can be
shown in a small space, the interests and questions of someone who always
questioned the world, and time... someone who dealt with much that had to do
with light: painting, drawing, aesthetics and architecture. Someone who wanted
to know what the sands look like in various parts of the world, which turn out
to be very similar to each other, just as the light in 1923 was the same as it
is today.
September
2023
Pedro Lanhas
