João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva, Eye Model, 2006, Installation, Camera Obscura, tabel, ostrich legs, lense, spotlight, size variable, Courtesy: Galeria Graça Brandão, Lissabon, Photo: Pedro Tropa und Teresa Santos, Photo Courtesy: ZDB, Lissabon.

João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva, Colombo’s column, 2006, Production still, C-Print, 180 x 240 cm, Courtesy Galeria Graça Brandão, Lissabon.

Kunstverein Hannover e.V.
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Eckpunkt João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva:
About the Presence of Things
March 14-May 17, 2009

The short films, sculptures, and installations by the Portuguese artist duo João Maria Gusmão (born 1979) and Pedro Paiva (born 1977), who will show their works this summer in the Portuguese Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennial, will be presented in Germany for the first time in the exhibition About the Presence of Things.

The short films, sculptures and installations by João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva move in the area between myth and science and they tell of nature’s magic and mysteries. The spatial combination and juxtaposition of documentaries dealing with simple, quasi scientific experiments, observations on nature, short wondrous narrations and extrasensory phenomena challenge the usual perception of the world and moves in metaphysical dimensions. The pieces contain references to alchemy and the occult, positivistic experiments and speculative philosophy as well as Theater of the Absurd and science fiction literature.

The films were made on 16 mm celluloid film material, and their aesthetics and choreography combine references to early silent films with borrowings from scientific educational films from the 1960s and 1970s. Despite the care and meticulousness that go into their execution, the individual sequences lasting no more than four minutes seemingly show meaningless experiments or impossible, obviously faked observations:

A series of films thus references the non-existing science of Abissology taken from the novel La Grand Beuverie (1938) by René Daumal. Abissology is described there as the study of non-perceivable infinity that forms a contradictory antithesis to the perceivable world. With their cinematic allegories, Gusmão and Paiva reintegrate amazement and reverence for the unexplainable into the rational present. The linking of diverse cultural and historical approaches in dealing with fundamental questions of human existence points to the origins of our culture and emphasizes the originally close link between science, philosophy and religion.

In Magnetic Shadow (2008), shadows move across a surface full of metal filings. The filings follow the movement as if the shadows were invested with a presence other than their inherent absence of light. The filings arrange themselves according to this absence, orient themselves parallel to Plato’s parable of the cave in keeping with the outlines of the shadow and change accordingly.

João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva transform the exhibition space into a kind of alchemistic laboratory where the technologically oriented, rational search for knowledge is displaced by a mythic, phenomenal and paranormal perception. The aesthetics of the 16 mm film convey an impression of the authenticity of the filmed events that is, however, simultaneously undermined by means of the omission of sound even when the participants are seemingly explaining their actions. No explanations of the phenomena, which are in part supplemented by sculptural test assemblies, are provided. A connection between the seemingly mysterious occurrences and producing potential meanings is left in the hands of the viewer.

João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva, Magnetic Shadow, 2008, 16mm film, colour, no sound, 1’36’’, Courtesy Galeria Graça Brandão, Lissabon und Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo.