“The rest is a shadow” and the light falls – Edit

In a joint exhibition at the Center Pompidou, director Pedro Costa, sculptor Roy Chaves and photographer Paolo Nozzolino, all three Portuguese, display dark works that invoke the limits of what can be perceived, what can be said and what is possible.

Suddenly we get into the dark. We give up the coordinates of space and time. On the cusp of this darkness, on a small piece of screen moving almost to a standstill, Ventura, actor and character in director Pedro Costa’s films, greets us with a sign showing his hands open, crossed in front of his face, like a vague warning. As if he protects himself with this gesture from us, from our intrusion of darkness, he also protects us, in advance, from something. Then the exhibition space in the Pompidou Center disappears, to be replaced by complete darkness. We make our way through this dense matter, this rarefied light, where works will soon appear, gradually revealing their outlines, slowly drawing their alliances. The channel one enters gives a room where faces stand like juveniles against the sky.

Elevator during infinite time

between screens Filhas do Fogo, Installing still shots in several of the foreground photos, as Pedro Costa resumes from his film lava house (1994) The camera gazes of the fire girls on the island of Fogo, in Cape Verde, the forms are suspended, less and less imperceptible: forms or rather forces, organic as well as mechanical, moving are transformed into motionless. “Like tuas maõs”, Your hands.

statues…