carla rebelo
Exhibition text - Watermark
Money Museum, Lisbon, 2017
The persistence of the place - Leonor Nazaré
Paradoxical, almost provocative, the transformation of a space that was a church into a Money Museum challenges our habituation to all desecrations; the world of finance, instead of being expelled, is called to inhabit it. Two hypotheses are posed to each artist who is called to register work in the place: to think the work in the encounter, even if remote, with the project and the concept of the Museum, or to think it crossed by the memory of what the building was in other moments of the past. Carla Rebelo chose this second possibility, which challenged her deeply. The two unpublished works that he thought for the place unearth his memories. The work that occupies the high choir, and which he exhibited in 2016 at the Palácio de Oeiras, redoes the relationship he had with that place; a floor of partially painted mirrors reflects the ceiling, bringing it in an extensive plunge to its surface, crushing, in this spatial illusion, the vertical axis that any architectural space always offers and, most of all, a church. Fragmented, abundant, invaded by “shadows” (painted black spots), the panel comments on the very idea of division and / or multiplication that the mirror contains, suggesting a mobile and “false” space, enhancing the design of the place with its brightness and its grammar; it suggests fluidity of light, liquefaction, easy opening, lying and restless to the appearance of the image.
But verticality is called to express its full strength in the work that Carla Rebelo installs in the space that was the altar. It operates in an unusual archaeological way in which the layers (of memories) appear suspended and raised in the air instead of being buried: the artist weaves the design of three walls, reveals two plans of the church, draws later functions of the building, recreates the light. The four layers of information that he proposes to us, returning to the place the reference to the successive human experiences that he housed, recall the church before and after the earthquake, the walls of Cerca Moura, by D. Dinis and Fernandina, the uses as a park of parking and as a safe, already in the 20th century. At the same time, they build a trompe l'oeil, apprehensible from various points of view, paying homage to the intense relationship that the Portuguese church established with the Baroque aesthetic, and the very Baroque principle of staging the infinite folds of space, time, the sacred, human, light, perception, reverie and enigma.
The third piece also appears from images of the church, already desecrated and stripped down to the wooden structure. The artist recovers from them the design of Roman arches and warheads to build a door, a portico, a window, an arch, a boat, a whale belly from which / from which the skeleton appears, thus merging architectural substance and organic suggestion, an invitation to crossing and intimidation, welcoming and gathering, collection and gathering, shelter and passage. The collapse of the back wall of the structure opens the entrance, the wall gives way, the bricks spread out and are no longer a compact wall, the outline becomes a shadow and no longer matter, back of the light or consequence of it and therefore dematerialization. The memory of a conceived but not realized relocation led to recreation: it would have been necessary to unravel, undo, displace, redo, but it never happened. The work takes the movement that was within this idea and represents it, makes it present again: with some emotion (movement) and delicacy, but also with strength and determination; making reference to an observed reality but also with the establishment of a fantasy; with the projection of the disorder of the scattered bricks but also with the attention given to the numbers that numbered them, in order to predict an exact reconstruction. The image in time is made by these indications in space, by the materiality of the sculpture turned into a quote, commentary and conceptualization of architecture and history. The temporal regression and the spatial restlessness that the three works propose are made with the lifting of the bones, with the skeleton and the shadow, the specular mistakes and sorcery, the overlaps, the stratigraphy, the forces, the points of view.
None of the three pieces can be known without the observer's mobility, his real physical effort, his lost steps. In situ: the works endorse the place, integrate it by integrating it. Poinsot (1) speaks of this when he explains the extent to which the place can be the field and material of the work and that it is a visual and semantic cut of a world or mental space that the observer must reconstruct. Mnesic regression is also a return to the skin that covered these bones (and which the shadow evokes), which involved these structures of things that have disappeared and collapsed by other uses and ambitions; it is a return to the volume contained in these surfaces, in these perimeters that the drawing recovers. The skin also has its layers and, as we read in Paul Valéry, it is really the most profound (2). In the dialogue in which he argues, the character recalls the formation of the human embryo from an ectoderm that closes and gives rise to the entire organism. The brain, the bone marrow, the ability to feel and think derive from and depend on that skin and, however much it is excavated, it is to the skin that man reaches the deepest depths of himself. Many sculptures, and certainly those of Carla Rebelo, have this in common with archeology and architecture: the interest in the skeleton (the interwoven threads, the erected structures, the overlapping designs and layers, the stretched cables) and the imagination of its filling, to the skin - a drawn perimeter, a projected shadow, a mirage or an epiphany on any altar in an old church, an old Lisbon, a new presence that designates memory to transfigure it.
From that old Lisbon, it is important to say that the place near this, where the headquarters of Banco de Portugal is located, was an area of strong commercial and financial activity since the 16th century; that the Church of S. Julião joined the Bank's facilities in the 1930s and since then has had different uses, up to recent works, which have transformed it into a Money Museum. The History and vicissitudes of the Church (Patriarchal status, before the earthquake, luxurious reconstruction by the Marquis of Pombal plan, in the 18th century, wildfire, new reconstruction, excavations, incorporation of old materials, discovery of the wall lines) informed and mobilized the work of the artist, who brought to the works the “watermark” (also associated with the printing of money on paper), the indelible identification of each moment.
And if the piece placed in the altar space takes on the title, which is also the one of the exhibition, Watermark, it is in the high choir that O Sonho de Orpheus, exhibited in 2016 at the Palace of the Marquis of Pombal in Oeiras, most remits us, for on the one hand, for the overlapping of the medieval Lisbon plan (the black drawing) on the Baixa Pombaline plane (the layout of the mirrored rectangles) and, on the other hand, for that exhibition, held under the sign of water, to which the artist called Becoming Water. It is the city's past that is recovered here, but it is also the proximity of the water and its abundant presence in underground galleries, which is insinuated here - the water we heard, last year, in the sound installation carried out in a corridor in the palace of Oeiras; whose course we imagined in the large wooden dam he exhibited there (wheel and long grooves); the water of the Palace lake over which he wove red cotton threads (3); infinite texture and narrative (Penelope and Ulysses), rescue from the darkness (Orpheus and Euridice) (4). Orpheus' image was that of the Palace ceiling, in one of the rooms, mirrored by the floor piece, which now reflects another architecture; but the name of Pombal (5) is attached to the memory of both places, to the signature of (re) construction and monumentality.
The wooden porch and the “bricks” scattered from the third work again absorb the signs of the place: the tallest windows and their shadow projected on a warhead; the idea of construction. Numbered until 1800 for a relocation that did not take place, and once all numbers were erased, in a prolonged restoration operation, the stones are here designated by wooden units that the artist numbers from there. The coincidence of the inauguration date of the neoclassical church, in 1802, is just another mesh in the tight symbolic siege of referencing. The 1816 fire will restart the cycle of destruction and reconstruction. Fire and water challenge the persistence of the place, with its “marks”, its requirement for purification. With them and on them the records of what happened are written, the books (6) of memory are recorded: sculptures, space, numbers, plots, shadows, mirrors, evocation.
1. Jean-Marc Poinsot, “In Situ, lieux et espaces de la sculpture contemporaine”, in Qu'est-ce que la sculpture moderne? Paris: Center Georges Pompidou, 1986, p. 322-329.
2. Paul Valéry, «Idée Fixe ou deux hommes à la mer», in Œuvres, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris: Gallimard, 1988, Vol.II, pp.215-218.
3. At the Oeiras Palace, in 2016, one of the pieces consisted of a mesh of red threads crossed over the water of the lake. Another piece, Sala de Jogo, also incorporated extended wires, this time between chairs, evoking connections between people and playful strategies.
4. I refer to Maria João Gamito's text, “O Devir da Água”, in the leaflet that accompanied the exhibition, for other shades of this analogy. I also remember the play Penélope, in the same exhibition, which worked on the idea of waiting and inner travel.
5. At the Oeiras Palace, in 2016, one of the pieces was a large cage in which the artist superimposed the evocation of garden birds, an existing loft on the property and the Pombaline technique of building buildings “in cage”.
6. In the installation The Library of Muses held in the Sala do Conhecimento (Palácio de Oeiras, in 2016), brought together the nine Muses, with an artist's book for each one, inspired by the knowledge that each represents. However, a large part of these books were included in the collection of artist books in the Art Library of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Exhibition text - Watermark
Money Museum, Lisbon, 2017
The persistence of the place - Leonor Nazaré
Paradoxical and almost provocative, the transformation of a space that was once a church into a Museum of Money challenges our accustomedness to all profanations. Instead of banishing it, this place invites the world of finance to live within its walls. When summoned to inscribe their work here, each artist is faced with two possibilities: to think their work in relation to the Museum's project and concept, or to think it within the context of the memory of what the building was in the past. Carla Rebelo chose the latter, and that proved to be a great challenge. The two new pieces she devised for this place have unearthed her memories. The third work, first shown in 2016, at the Oeiras Palace, and now in display on the muse- um's choir loft, reproduces the relationship it established with that first venue. A floor covered with partially painted mirrors that reflect the ceiling, bringing it down in a long dive into the ground and shattering - in this spatial illusion - the vertical axis that all architectural spaces, and churches in particular, offer us. Fragmented, abundant, invaded by “shadows” (painted black surfaces), the panel is a commentary to the very idea of split or multiplication that is conveyed by the miror. It suggests a mobile and “fake” space, extolling the contours of the place with its brightness and its grammar; it suggests a fluidity of light, liquefaction, an easy, deceitful and restless openness to the advent of the image.
We are a family owned and operated business.
Even so, verticality is called upon to express all its might in the work Carla Rebelo has installed on the space that was once occupied by the altar. In it, she uses an unusual architectural process through which the layers (of memories) are suspended and lifted on the air instead of buried: the artist weaves together the drawing of three walls to reveal two plans of the church, she draws in the building's later functions, and recreates light. The artist offers us four different layers of information, restoring the references to the successive human experiences in this space, evoking the church as it was before and after the 1755 earthquake, the different city walls (the Moorish Wall, the D. Dinis Wall and the Fernandina Wall), and its use as a parking garage and as a bank vault in the 20th century. At the same time, these layers produce a trompe l'oeil that can be perceived from different view points an homage to the strong link between the Portuguese Catholic church and Baroque aesthetics, but also to the Baroque principle of staging the infinite folds of space, of time, of the sacred, of the human, of light, of perception, of reveries, of mystery.
We are a family owned and operated business.
The third piece was based on images of the church, in a time when it had already been decriminalized and stripped down to its wooden structure. From these images, the artist appropriates the drawing of the round and lancet arches to build a door, a portico, a window, an arch, a boat, or the belly of a whale that allows us to see the skeleton of the building, thus fusing architectural matter and organic suggestion, an invitation to cross over, but also an intimidation, a challenge for us to collect and recollect, the image of a shelter and of a passageway. The entrance was opened by bringing down the structure's background wall. The wall collapses, the scattered bricks are no longer a compact barrier. Losing its materiality, the contour becomes a shadow, the contrary of light or its consequence a dematerialisation. This is the reenactment of the memory of a displacement that was idealized, but never carried out: it would have had been necessary to carve out, unmake, displace, remake but neither of those things ever happened. The work uses the movement within the idea and represents it, makes it present anew: delicately and with some emotion (and motion, movement), but also vigorously and with determination. It refers to an observed reality, but it also introduces a fantasy with the projection of the randomly scattered bricks and the attention given to the numbers which were written on them, suggesting the possibility of a thorough reconstruction of the wall. The image in time is produced by these clues in space, by the materiality of a sculpture that becomes a quotation, a commentary and a conceptualisation of both architecture and History. The regression in time and the spatial disturbance proposed by these three pieces is accomplished through the lifting of the bones, with skeleton and shadow, with specular deception and bewitchment, with overlays, stratigraphy, forces, and points of view.
None of these three works can be known without the mobility, and the physical commitment of the observer. In situ: the pieces underwrite the place, they integrate it, they become part of it. Poinsot (1) refers to this when he explains how a location can be the field and the matter of a work of art, and the latter a visual and semantic cut-out of a mental world or space that is up to the observer to reconstruct . This mnesic regression is also a way of going back to the skin that has once covered these bones (which the shadow evokes), to the skin that has once enveloped these structures, which were made of things that have been broken or removed from here by other uses or ambitions. It is also a way of going back to the volume that these surfaces contain in the perimeters that are recovered by the drawing. The skin also has its layers, and as Paul Valery has put it, “That which is most profound in the human being is the skin.” In the dialogue where this sentence appears, the character that utters it describes the formation of a human embryo, an ectoderm that closes upon itself and originates the whole organism. “The marrow, the brain, all the things we require in order to feel [and] think” emanate from and are contingent on the skin. As hard as we try to burrow in, our deepest human core can be found on our skin. Many sculptures, and certainly the ones by Carla Rebelo, have this in common with archeology and with architecture: the attention to the skeleton (the interwoven threads, the erected structures, the over- laid layers and drawings, the stretched cables) and the conjuring up of the layers upon it, right up to the skin - a drawn perimeter, a projected shadow, a mirage or an epiphany in an altar of an old church, in an old Lisbon, a new presence that calls upon a memory, and transforms it.
It is important to say that, in the old Lisbon and since the 16th century, the place just next to this museum, where we can find the headquarters of the Bank of Portugal, was an area of significant commercial and financial activity. The church of São Julião became the property of the bank in the 1930s and has had different uses since then. It was only after the most recent renovations that it became the Money Museum. History and chance modeled the church (the Patriarchal status before the earthquake, the luxurious reconstruction under the plan of the Marquis de Pombal in the 18th century, the violent fire, the second reconstruction, archeological digs, incorporation of older materials, discovery of the old wall lines), informed and organized the artist's work, who brought onto her pieces the “watermark” (which can also be associated with paper money) that indelibly identifies each moment.
The exhibition takes its title from the work on the altar, Watermark (Watermark), but it's the piece Orpheus' Dream (Orpheus's Dream), in the choir loft, that refers to the overlapping layers of the medieval city (the black drawing) and the Lisboa Pombalina (the mirrored rectangles), and to the show where it was first presented, Becoming Water, in the Palace of the Marquês de Pombal, in Oeiras. The artist recaptures the city's olden days, but also its closeness to water and the liquid's abundant presence in underground galleries, a presence that can also be felt here - the water we heard, last year, in the sound installation in one of the corridors of the Oeiras Palace, and imagined running through the great wooden dam she has shown there; the water of the palace's lake, over which she wove red cotton threads (3); infinite mesh and narrative (Penelope and Odysseus), a rescue from darkness (Orpheus and Eurydice) (4). The image of Orpheus was on one of the palace's ceilings, and was reflected by the mirrors on the ground. These mirrors now reflect a different architecture, but Pombal's name (5) is present in the memory of both places, in the signature of the (re) construction, and in the buildings' monumentality.
We are a family owned and operated business.
The wooden portico and the scattered “bricks” of the third piece absorb the characteristics of the place: its higher windows and their shadows projected in lancets; the idea of construction. These stones were numbered up to the figure of 1800 for a relocation that ended up never happening, and the numbers were later erased in prolonged restoration works. Here, the artist uses wooden units to represent the stones, and numbers them starting with that same number. The coincidence of the date of the inauguration of the neo-classical church, in 1802, is just one more knot in the symbolic ties produced by this game of references. The fire in 1816 will restart the cycle of destruction and reconstruction. Fire and water challenge the persistence of the place, they leave their “marks,” their demands for regeneration. With them, on them, we record what has come to happen, we write the books6 of memory: sculptures, space, numbers, plots and meshes, mirrors, and evocations.
We are a family owned and operated business.
1. Jean-Marc Poinsot, “In Situ, lieux et espaces de la sculpture contempo- rine”, in Qu'est-ce que la sculpture moderne? Paris: Center Georges Pompidou, 1986, p. 322-329.
We are a family owned and operated business.
2. Paul Valéry, “Idée Fixe ou deux hommes à la mer”, in Œuvres, Bibliotheque de la Pléiade, Paris: Gallimard, 1988, Vol.II, pp.215-218.
3. In the Oeiras Palace, in 2016, one of the pieces on display was a mesh of red thread crossing over the water of the lake. Another work, Game Room, also used thread to connect chairs, evoking playful strategies and links between people.
4. To further explore this analogy, please see the text by Maria João Gamito, “O Devir da Água”, which was printed on the exhibition flyer. Also of importance, and in that same show, the piece Penélope was based on the ideas of waiting and inner journey.
5. In the Oeiras Palace, in 2016, one of the works was a large cage that evoked the birds in the garden, the dovecote that exists on the premises, and the “pombaline” construction technique, which is based on a structural “cage . ”
We are a family owned and operated business.
6. In the installation A Biblioteca das Musas, in the Sala do Conhecimento (Room of Knowledge, Oeiras Palace, 2016), the artist represented the nine Muses with nine artist's books, each inspired by one of the Muses. Most of these books were acquired by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and now integrate the artist's book collection of the Foundation's Art Library.