Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art is pleased to present BIG BANG, a solo exhibition featuring two new installations and bi-dimensional works by João Louro.
João Louro is widely regarded as a leading artist of his generation. Best known for his BLIND IMAGES and DEAD ENDS, Louro idiosyncratically gathers together references culled from popular media alongside the work of radical theorists, either under the sleek, opaque surfaces of his BLIND IMAGES or on the large-scale, rhizomatic, grass roots traffic signs that constitute his series of DEAD ENDS.
Over the past two decades, João Louro has defined several journeys, or better yet, the idea of journey and navigation, not from one productive or evolutional point to another, but along alternative, secondary roads, detours, forgotten paths and “cul-de-sacs” as one of the many defining subjects of his work. This time round, Louro has defined another impossible journey as the theme for his show: an expedition by car to the beginning or origin of all things, one that ends in chaos.
The routes Louro proposes are never clear or linear, but rather somewhat labyrinthine, paths of flight from vertical order and prescription. It is never clear what his passengers can expect at the next turn – the journey is unpredictable – what awaits us at the next stop. The road is long and winding, and the one we have chosen to travel in the company of the artist is no exception. One senses from the back seat, from our view onto the desolate landscape, the exhilaration that radiates from the artist in his driver’s seat, his excitement at the roaring engine of his chosen vehicle, his obsession with this lost highway.
Louro, a blind runner, has no fear of speed. He steps down on the accelerator and concentrates on the road ahead. All of a sudden, our driver looses control. The car screeches, careers out of control and grins against the rails, spinning. By some miracle, we come to a halt. As we pry ourselves from this twisted wreck, a sense of a new beginning, of new life, flushes over us. This is what feeds and pumps through the veins of this strange creature, the daredevil, the Hollywood stuntman, the suburban racer x-type who whizzes around the parking lot in his domestic vehicle: the possibility of return.
Working directly in the space at Cristina Guerra Gallery, João Louro will recreate the “mise en scène” of a fresh accident, presenting the wreckage of a crash and brutalised rails together with the fractured images or flashes of an ordered universe.
João Louro has exhibited in Europe and the US. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Blind Runner’, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon (2004); and Play, Rec and Pause, Christopher Grimes, Santa Monica (2006); and the group shows ‘InSite ’05 – Art Practices in The Public Domain’, S. Diego and Tijuana (2005), the 51st Venice Biennial, Venice (2005). ‘Blind Runner: An Artist Under Surveillance’ is a documentary on the artist by director Luís Alves de Matos will premiere in DOCLISBOA on Friday, October 26th at 6.30pm. The screening will take place in the large auditorium of Culturgest (Rua Arco do Cego, Lisbon).
Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art is located at Rua de Santo António à Estrela 33, 1350-291 Lisbon Gallery hours are: Tuesday to Friday, 11am-8pm and Saturday 12am-8pm
