Solo exhibition curated by Marta Mestre

CIAJG, Guimarães

15.04.2021 - 05.09.2021

Quarto Blindado (Armoured Room) by Fernão Cruz, is a space of infinite creation. As in origin myths, where the gods are skilled sculptors, shaping the lives of all beings and things in the world, in this room the artist (b. Lisbon, 1995) addresses the act of creation. Inspired by the materials, textures and colours of the African sculptures held in the museum’s collection, and by F. D. Bedford’s illustrations for the book Peter and Wendy (1911), by the British writer J. M. Barrie, Fernão Cruz builds an installation that has different layers of meaning.

The adventures of the boy who did not want to grow up are the pretext for building a psychological and intimate space, in which reality, suspended by art, sees its rules subverted. The use of papier maché - which José de Guimarães uses in many of his works – makes it possible, with limited resources, to reproduce objects without a function, to build a fragile and yet tangible space of dreams and desires, that the visitor invades and contemplates.

The sculptures that populate the room include a petrified umbrella, a broken surveillance camera, a bird, a family scene and a magical arm that seems to invade the real world. Made of raw cloth and exhibited like the pages of a book, F. D. Bedford’s engravings are altered by Fernão Cruz. A place of refuge is created through the domestic universe and sense of intimacy, Peter Pan’s capacity to fly without wings, the feelings of loss, mourning and desire, in a reality in which intimate things loom large with floating heavy bodies.

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