A pentagon, a circle, eight books

Text of the exhibition with the same name held at the São Lázaro Library in Lisbon

Inês Correia

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We are a family owned and operated business.

A pentagon, a circle, eight books is the title, which provides us with the coordinates for an unusual bibliographic access. It is the formulation of a trail suggested with generosity. The generosity of those who seek, with the creation of new books and, above all, new readings, expand the experience of the Library and its universal testimony.

Carla Rebelo, continuing her method of interpreting space, which she proposes to inhabit as a visual artist, assigned to the Reading Room of the São Lázaro Library, a set of Artist Books, inscribed in the category of 'single copy'. The designation conveys, in the context of a public library, a strong identity, representative and symbolic value. On the one hand, it aligns the pieces on the established axis of similarity, on the other, it traces the deviation that justifies the relentless search for knowledge.

With polygonal morphology and with the shelving integrated in the proportionality of the architecture of the neoclassical building, the Reading Room of the São Lázaro Library is a space that reduces the distance from the past. By preserving the original concept and materials, it describes a place of remembrance and maintenance of knowledge, which is important to transmit over time. From some books, others were derived. To these, there were so many more, occupying and advancing on the shelf as an insatiable vine. And so, to the approximately 20,000 titles available in the current library, it is now added, this temporary entropy

The intention of belonging to space, based on the visual experience of the object that is a book, reveals the dichotomy between a contemplative practice, which the reading room favored and the discursive practice, which the object book has been making possible in the artist's creative journey. Somewhere, between one and the other, Carla Rebelo creates bridges of connection, allowing the reader who accesses the library and the living room, to examine the immateriality of the Book and Reading. At these points - meeting points - four pairs of Books are strictly arranged: in the geometry of the room, in proportion to the floors, in the gravitational point of the circular table, the bookcase, the shelf. They are grouped and allocated in order of letters - if the library were not an ancestral way of ordering the chaotic flow of the world, of fighting against dispersion, of distinguishing what must be remembered.

A first pair, identified by the letters A and M, alludes to the spectrum that is born in the intimacy of the mirror and whose perception will always be proper to the eyes of those who contemplate its pages.

Another pair, associated with Blind Books, both designated by the letter C, referring to the idea of ​​absence for the purpose of memory. Words and images are collected from several books taken from the bookcase for having been read. Among the blind volumes, the phrases or illustrations follow and intertwine to tell new stories, in an unpredictable deconstruction of the limits of the books to which they once belonged.

A third pair uses the letter S and both books have a factual pattern. Cash books are receptacles for the perception of the gesture. The gesture that makes reading an unavoidable haptic experience. There, assuming the parity between the left and right hand, we can foresee the effect of touch and the reciprocity of the transformative impact felt by the skin that flips and the paper that is fluted. Two hands, return the idea of ​​complete surrender.

Finally, the fourth pair, uses the letters T and G to welcome the idea of ​​mapping. In the experience of the Library, there is an inevitable entrance to the labyrinth, to the infinite and to chaos. Book T and Book G are material records of that trip. A trip that is made in search of a safe anchorage, but that is justified by the restlessness and unrest. Books T and G record and cross the limits of the library, bringing us closer to what is distant and improbable.

This set of eight books and their arrangement between the safe place of the circular table and the ordered shelves of the mezzanine offer a complement to the (meta) physical experience, possible inside the reading room. The relationship between the books on the table and their peers on the upper floor suggests the use of hypertext in an initiatory scenario. The access to the mezzanine is made by spiral stairs, forcing the helical movement towards the light of knowledge to which one aspires. From the same movement, we can foresee the inherent transformation of the subject.

This exhibition is, in the context of LivrObjecto - Anatomy and Architecture, a unique opportunity to observe the BOOK as an object without limits and in which its full value is amplified through the relationship, which it establishes when crossing with others ...

Lisbon, November 26, 2017
Inês Correia