“Artistic thinking is embedded in most of what I do but, my modus operandi is not exclusively that of an artist”.

This quotation seems to sum up the production force behind João Paulo Feliciano’s work: visual artist, musician, designer, artistic promoter, cultural manager, are amongst his multiple activities. Operating across several media and diverse technological languages, Feliciano’s body of work returns to the vast extension of the entertainment industry as culturally relevant, contaminated by a sense of artistic and critical opportunism, where “things happen when enthusiasm meets opportunity”. Highlights from his solo exhibitions include: “The Blues Quartet”, Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center, EUA (2007); Serralves Museum, Porto (2004); “The Possibility of Everything: João Paulo Feliciano selected works” Culturgest (2006). Also worth mentioning is the artist’s participation in the XXVI São Paulo’s Biennal (2004), and in the exhibition “Sonic Boom - The Art of Sound”, Hayward Gallery, London (2002).

In this most recent exhibition at Cristina Guerra’s Gallery, João Paulo Feliciano departs from his experience as creative director of the festival NOS Primavera Sound at Parque da Cidade in OPorto, to create a series of works which expands this experience, both as a creator and as a spectator, to the territory of his own artistic practice.

“For the past four years I’ve been challenged to put my artistic views into practice at the beautiful settings of the Parque da Cidade in OPorto. Doing my best to make the NOS Primavera Sound Festival as rich, intense, and fullfiling as a festival can be for true music lovers, my approach has been to use art not to show off but, to resonate the magic happening on stage. Music is the ‘main art’ of the festival; to experience live music is the reason why it happens.

The intense experience of thinking, designing, making and living the NOS Primavera Sound has become a rich part of my artistic life. Suddenly, on the days that followed last year’s edition, with all memories still vivid and clear, a series of ideas for art pieces flowed: materials, objects, shapes, building systems, pictures, colours, metaphors, experiences, events... many aspects of the festival came to mind as potencial ideas for art pieces.

What interested me about these ideas was the possibility to work on them freely, unbounded from the many constraints of the festival itself.

It’s like things have gone full circle now: after four years with the festival as a kind of giant temporary laboratory, these pieces come as a natural evolution of the work I’ve been developing in the last three decades, taking music as the central phenomenon of popular culture.

Finally, beyond all artworks in display at the gallery, the fact that this exhibition is happening makes clear the uniqueness of the NOS Primavera Sound Festival - only 5 years ago this reality would be unthinkable, in the context of the big festivals scene in Portugal. Therefor, justice has to be made to both promotor and sponsor for acknowledging the inextricable relationship between music and the space where it happens - and trusting an artist to think and design it through”.

João Paulo Feliciano

Março 2016