João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva. Tem gwef tem gwef dr rr rr
  Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (Germany) - 10.09 - 09.10.2011

   Motive Gallery, Amsterdam (Netherlands). 12.03 - 29.04.2011

Press release
 

João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva (born 1979 and 1977) describe their work as a poetical philosophical fiction. A central source of inspiration for the Portuguese artist duo are the writings of the little-known French author René Daumal (1908–1944) who bemoaned the loss of myths in modern society and devoted himself to the limits of conventional perception and the magic of things.

As Daumal described in his 1943 short story "The Determining Memory," Tem gwef tem gwef dr rr rr was a sound himself made during one of his visions of the hereafter. Like Daumal, who negated the boundaries between the mysterious and the rational in his writings, knowledge overlaps with surreal, unexplainable apparitions in Gusmão's and Paiva's films, photographs and sculptures in which they artistically visualise the incomprehensible and unimaginable.

In a kind of dreamscape setting developed especially for the exhibition, the artists show a series of works that challenge reason in particular with filmic means, optical illusions and obscure experiments and deal with the problem of reliably illustrating reality.

The exhibition is accompanied by a German/English publication with numerous colour illustrations and texts by Elodie Evers, René Daumal and João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva.

Curated by Elodie Evers






 

French
German

© ArtCatalyse International / Marika Prévosto 2011. All Rights Reserved

Exhibition 10 September - 9 October 2011. Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Grabbeplatz 4 –40213 Düsseldorf (Germany). Tel.: +49 211 89 96 243. Tuesday to Sunday, public holidays 11–18h.

International past exhibitions 2011