writings

Khāmoshī
The Silences of Hormuz and Adalet, in Fernanda Valadares

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The UNFINISHED world

Two sets of works comprise the exhibition Chiasma, a solo show by Fernanda Valadares at the Ocre Gallery in Porto Alegre. These are works from the Backrooms series and the Falling Sky series, which in some way reflect on its harshness. The artist works with the ancient technique of encaustic painting, using marine plywood as a support.

MIRAGES in the Bottomless Sea

Enormous spaces without boundary, such as salt flats, deserts, or open sea, invoke the void. There is nothing as far as the eye can see. Someone experiences that emptiness, yet the immensity strips away the borders that define the individuality of one who is loose in vast space. We can confront the vastness for a few moments, asserting ourselves—I, I, I—but one of two things happens: either anguish sets in, or dissolution into the whole occurs.

Between times and spaces

There are a few indications of paths to travel through the works of Fernanda Valadares in Depois: [After:], an exhibition currently in the final days of its run at Galeria Mamute in Porto Alegre. It begins in the spaces between the metal cubes placed on the floor, continues along the line that seems to traverse painting by painting along the walls like a vast and distant horizon, and concludes with the title of the series gathered there: Migrações [Migrations].

On the verge of the void

Fleshed out to their bare bones, architectural environments reveal their structures: floors and ceilings in dialogue, exposed columns and beams, walls meeting walls, passages disclosing new walls.

The seventh continent

The contemporary world is driven by constant acceleration. Communication technologies enable the circulation of a volume of information at a speed never seen before.

Before, During, and AFTER:

The scene that haunts me is the following: on his way to work, while crossing a bridge in the rain, a professor stops a young woman from jumping. After that—and after the book he finds with the girl—nothing will ever be the same.

Looking into the distance, looking again: Liberdade é pouco [freedom is little]

The extended time, the waiting, a gaze that lingers on the near emptiness, because we are facing the absence of the human.

The intimacy of place and the immensity of space (and vice versa)… The immensity of place and the intimacy of space.

The first time I confronted a work by Fernanda Valadares, I stood in silence, contemplating that interior architectural space radiating quietude. I thought of the hours she must have spent accumulating, layer by layer, the pigmented wax in the encaustic technique—a process that demands patience and time...