In 2001, a happening transformed Galeria Quadrum — located fifteen hundred meters from Galeria Quadrado Azul in Lisbon — into a recording studio, whose scenographic apparatus allowed visitors to observe, both directly and indirectly, the production of a pornographic film that would later enter the commercial circuit under the title Fantasia na Galeria (Fantasy in the Gallery), by Rita Ruby.
We revisit it now, a quarter of a century later, not for a remake, but to restore its visibility through the lens of La Peau de Chagrin, a novel by Honoré de Balzac published in 1831, whose narrative revolves around a magical object — the “wild ass’s skin” (peau de chagrin) — capable of fulfilling the wishes of its owner, but with one condition: with each wish fulfilled, the skin shrinks, just like the life of the one who desires.
In the absence of the peep-show audience, bored by the heroic efforts of its live performers, take after take, it is the melancholic disaster paintings of Willem Weismann, the intimate friendship of Ernesto de Sousa’s graffiti, the dreams and autofictions of Titania Seidl, and the hypersensitive objects of Musa paradisiaca that gaze back at us, as we access — with intentionality and courage — the distant desires for freedom from the early twenty-first century.
