https://henriquepavao.com Henrique Pavão Mon, 23 Jun 2025 19:26:41 +0000 https://henriquepavao.com en https://henriquepavao.com/Writings Tue, 24 Sep 2019 11:50:30 +0000 Henrique Pavão https://henriquepavao.com/Writings Ghost Ranch She found you in a canyon Through a black vulture’s wing Your murderer was dry air In a shape of a song I don’t wanna get over you Lying in the sun In a crying land A famous musician said goodbye In a ten-second concert Enough time To avenge you In the shape of a canyon, she unburied you In 1956 and 1957 Edward Abbey enrolled as a ranger for the Arches National Park, isolating himself from the world. He spent a long period in the Colorado landscapes, living in a trailer, reporting on wildlife and the changes in what was then an untouched part of the world, before it was torn apart by human impact and tourism. His reports were published in a 1968 book – Desert Solitaire or a Season in the Wilderness. Around the same time, a young Michael Heizer, tired of the vibrating New York art scene, traveled to the Nevada desert with his trailer where he stayed while building his life project – City (1970 – 2022). Way before these two characters ever planned their commitment to solitude, Georgia O’Keeffe was going for long walks on the New Mexican deserts looking for bones and other elements to integrate in her paintings. After the unexpected underwhelming reception of his first studio album – Five Leaves Left (1969)– and struggling to perform it live, Nick Drake dropped out of Cambridge and rented a room in North London, where he locked himself playing his guitar and writing what is now, after his death, considered one of the best folk albums – Bryter Layter (1971). Playing an instrument requires method. Repeating the same notes over and over again brings you into a trance- like state that is itself an isolation from whatever surrounds you and probably the most obsessive act one can engage in. I have always struggled with the fact that I was a better artist than a musician, but somehow music has always informed my practice and now I understand that its repetitive aspect was a way to replace my fluctuating lack of studio labor. During the preparation of this exhibition, I lived in a rammed earth house built with the soil of the land where it stands; a construction technique used to insulate the interior from extreme high and low temperatures. The house is located in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, an area that could become inhabitable by the end of the twenty first century according to some specialists. Climate changes are causing severe droughts. The air and the wind are bone dry; from May onwards, everything is the color of steel. The nearest town is a twenty-minute drive and for days one might not see a single soul. Some film directors think this region resembles the Wild West the most; unsurprisingly someSpaghetti Westerns were shot in this part of the world. The pieces in this exhibition – Ghost Ranch and Bull Guitar Drag (after Christian Marclay) – are the result of a series of actions that took place in this specific location and during a period of six months. In complete solitude.&nbsp; One of the motifs of Western movies is the use of static, romantic views of the land, which function as premonitory moments that anticipate a gun fight or other kinds of violence. Throughout the dry season groups of vultures are often seen patrolling the skies, invading what is apparently a tranquil, beautiful and silent landscape, looking for food. During one of my walks, the scavenging birds led me to a bull skeleton. In the footsteps of Georgia O’Keeffe, I managed to collect a big part of the skeleton except for some bones that were carried away by wild cats, foxes, vultures and other animals.I made fifty-nine molds of every bone of this skeleton with my bare hands. These molds were then filled with the earth from where they were found, turning death into a resurrection. Every sculpture now carries the soil of a land on its way to extinction. Mold making is studio labor and, therefore, akin to playing an instrument. One tirelessly repeats the same movements with the goal of repeating the same shape forever. For many musicians, instruments are carriers and they are limited to a certain number of songs – contemporary pianist Nils Frahm, keeps on buying and selling keyboards until they run dry. The guitar has always been a McGuffin* inWestern movies – like in Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar. A cowboy carries a guitar strapped to his back, a replacement for his addiction to guns. There are two guitars in this exhibition. The first, a Fender Jazzmaster tuned to open D minor&nbsp;[1], was left alone on the red rocky soil, facing the rust of sundown with the west wind blowing over its metal strings, the sound is both melancholic and spiritual as the wind never blows the same way, thus creating different random melodies often interrupted by the landing of dirt particles and small insects on it. The instrument signals the dry air that killed the bull whose skeleton I found. This sound piece was the key for the project to unravel; the weeping guitar works as a soundtrack for the sculptures, scattered inside a vitrine without any particular order. This vitrine is meant to be walked over, as in many archeological sites, from the Acropolis to Teotihuacán. Contrary to these places one can also inhabit the ruins seeing them from underneath, like a corpse inside its grave. While the first guitar’s presence is phantasmal, represented by its sound, blasting out of two Marshall cabinets used in big stages, the second – a Squire Mustang – although physically present, carries a ghost of its action and its musician. &nbsp;While the first guitar’s presence is phantasmal, represented by its sound, blasting out of two Marshall cabinets used in big stages, the second – a Squire Mustang – although physically present, carries a ghost of its action and its musician. In a long interview with Seán O’Hagan&nbsp;[2], Nick Cave reflects on his creative process mentioning that his songs always depart from images. See for instance the strong imagery behind Hollywood&nbsp;[3]: A mountain lion roaming Los Angeles’ valleys, with their big mansions, in the night. Much like songs, artworks can remain artworks in their suggestive state even if they are never materialized. Mike Kelley’s Monkey Island (1982-3) is a collection of plans, writings and references that inform the viewer on how the finished work would look like. Its spiritual aspect makes it even more interesting than a tangible version of the island. Bull Guitar Drag (after Christian Marclay), witnessed a failed attempt to record the sound of a 600kg brown bull dragging an electric guitar&nbsp;[4] along the very same fields where the skeleton of the other bull was found – there is no footage of the action, as the cameras were not set yet and only a ten-second sound recording is left. The bull defeated my work, destroying the guitar, playing at its own will. The animal is glorified to a godlike state, a hero, the musician I have always dreamt to be. This moment is now contained inside a destroyed electric guitar, like the soil inside the molds. This is now a relic as many other guitars sold in auctions for millions of dollars because they bear witness to historical moments&nbsp;[5]. Ghost Ranch is a Western; a duel, between life and death. It is my homage, my farewell letter, my gift to this landscape. My plea for forgiveness. "Looking back, I can see that I had a relationship with the landscape that in one sense was very embodied, and at the same time existed independently of me, with a history that preceded and did not include me."[vi] This project is dedicated to the Love between Teresa and Rui. Henrique Pavão, 2025 *The term was introduced by Alfred Hitchcock. It consists of an object (device or event) of a symbolic nature whose relevance is not inherent, but nevertheless is crucial to drive the plot and the characters’ actions. &nbsp; [1] Open or alternate tunings often used in blues and country music mean tunning the guitar strings to a specific combination of notes that when strummed (without placing the fingers on the fretboard) the guitar plays a full chord. D minor is considered the saddest chord in western musical vocabulary. The extensive use of alternate tunings was the main reason for Nick Drake’s difficulty to perform live, forcing him to spent a fair amount of time retuning his guitar between songs. [2]Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan - Faith, Hope and Carnage, 2022. [3] Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – Ghosteen, 2019. [4] Proportionally, the weight of the bull and the electric guitar is equivalent to a human carrying a pen in his pocket. [5] Kurt Cobain’s Martin D-18E used in Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance (1989) was sold for six million dollars in 2020. [6] Lucy Raven - https://www.artforum.com/columns/lucy-raven-on-concrete-cinema-and-reimagining-the-genre-of-the-western-249695/ One Last Longing for Wrong Wrong Magazine#16 (Less and More) Lying on a couch, I talk as if no one can hear me. I discuss with myself why most of my references are male. They are just a way to replace you; after all, you were never completely there. Were you? Maybe, as Clark Kent, or a character of some kind, and that was somehow enough. Your inaccessibility made me like you. A fictional replacement seemed to me the only possible way out. I vomit you in my creativity in many forms, building universes that you can inhabit, but you are never seen. I chase your footsteps in the humid jungles, in dark hotel rooms, in ancient ruins; I like to be seen as you, as a character of a movie, that when seen through a screen will be my favourite - my speed-dating hero. As the film beams out of the projector everything fades away, and I am myself again, and my loneliness lasts and lasts. It is just me in an empty cinema - I use film reels to burn us away. On my way to the Hotel, families slept on the bus and the curtains were all partially shut. Fractions of green, sound-tracked by laser swords and droids – the new Star Wars was blasting. Layers of time, light and colours hit the dark bus as a drummer hits his snare. The Death Star is piercing the old Mayan jungles. I recall the story of Matapalo that I learned from Pax that morning. Pax is a young Mayan who wears a Liverpool shirt, smokes Lucky Strikes and knows every living or dead thing in that jungle. Matapalo is a sick tree, who hugs a healthy one in her seductive arms, stopping him from growing, in order to survive. Now, sitting in the restaurant of the Hotel as the sun sets, casting everything into a Blade Runner 2049-like colour, we were drunk and you told me what happened to Hart Crane after he left Mexico. He jumped off the back of the boat into the propellers and was completely cut to ribbons. A trace of bloody foam formed a road in the sea, like the Avenue of the Death, delivering Crane’s soul to where he had lost it. You said that you have to be very careful when you go to Mexico so that you are not caught up in this – in any of this kind of unconscious, dangerous violence that is really lurking in every patch of earth. It’s just there, everywhere trying to get you so you have to be on your guard at all times. You were right, Daniel also, there is something very heavy and strange in the air over here, the whole city is drowned in some kind of smog. You even see people wearing masks in the streets. This darkness really hits, and it hit me as it did with Hart Crane. I am stuck between four rotting walls; every spin of the fan, opens a crack in the ceiling. I watch “Troublemakers” on repeat and read aloud a chapter of 2666 every night. Outside the lions patrol the streets, so nobody can leave their own thoughts. “I dropped Bolaño on the bedside table and turned the lights off. In a few minutes I heard some voices, someone was in the balcony, it was 11 pm, and the fucker was listening to some kind of radio program about serial killers, what a lovely way to fall asleep. It lasted 5 minutes, the time of a slow smoke, then it vanished and I fell into darkness, really…” I am having very strange dreams; I woke up 4 times in the middle of the night without being able to breathe. My eyeballs are full with tears that don’t come out, smog fills my nose up to my brain. I am tired of you! Don’t get me wrong, I am forever grateful; after all, you shaped me. You taught me how time can coexist - that the future is but the obsolete in reverse, how to see interest in gas stations and how Hotels can be compared to pyramids, but I am no man’s son and I learned I would never be. Now, I feel stuck in a far cry, an immensity of tears, which flood old civilizations. Well, flood them all, this is my last longing. Henrique Pavão, Vale de Rossins, May 2020 Even a Rusty Pipe without a Function has a Twin Brother The mirror itself is not subject to duration, because it is an ongoing abstraction that is always available and timeless. The reflections on the other hand are fleeting instances that evade measure. Space is the remains, or corpse of time. It has dimensions. “Objects” are “sham space”, the excrement of thought and language. Once you start seeing objects in a positive negative way you are on the road to derangement.[1] You have found yourself on the backseat being driven through a repetitive landscape. Did you ever try to change it by drawing or writing on top of it? I want you to stay in this seat, look through the window and read the words on the damp glass. From Overton, NV follow Mormon Mesa Road to the top of the mesa eastward. As you come to the top of the mesa, you will pass a cattle guard. Continue east across the mesa for 2.7 miles. Do not leave the mesa. Just before you come to a second cattle guard at the east edge of the mesa, there will be a less-traveled road/path that extends along the rim of the mesa. Turn left onto this rim trail and follow it north 1.3 miles.[2] Double Negative is an earthwork conceived by artist Michael Heizer in a remote area of the Nevada desert in 1969. This intervention is almost invisible although has a great deal of presence. It consists of two duplicated slots, each forty feet deep and a hundred feet long, excavated into the tops of two mesas. Sited right in front of each other, these elevations are divided by a negative space, a deep ravine. Standing in one of the slots and looking across the chasm to the second slot the concept of spatial duplication becomes clear. Last August I was driving in a rush between the Algarve and Lisbon. Caught between destinations clouded my thoughts, but while pressing the trigger of the fuel delivery gun at a service station, I had the strange feeling of having been in the same place not so long ago. Though, something was wrong with the location of things, it seemed everything was flipped. In front of me vivid colors invaded the kiosk’s mechanical framing, hiding its ugliness. Behind, weekenders and truck drivers stretched and scratched their balls while resting their vehicles. I was surrounded by starved machinery. I turned my head towards the highway and looked through the rush-hour rain of headlights at the other side; I noticed the same vivid colors. I could also see that the metal awning corresponded to the one above my head and the number of fuel pumps was the same. What I was experiencing made me suspect the existence of a mirror-site, but such qualities could never be proved without having access to both locations at the same time. I was in a need of another person, a mirror-me that could confirm those similarities. If one saw a mirror as an ongoing abstraction and a reflection as a glance of this abstraction, what would happen if the mirror became the reflection itself? What would happen between two mirrors placed exactly opposite one another?&nbsp; If my suspicion was right my location allowed me, not only a full understanding of my spatial position, but also the feeling of controlling time. I was travelling backwards in a place where present and past faced and repelled each other. The image of my location was on the site I had been at three days ago on my way to the South and the place I stood would be the place reflecting my image on my next trip.&nbsp; Located in a place of “inversions without end upon other men’s journeys”[3], side road stations are considered by many junkspaces or non-places. For architect and theorist Rem Koolhaas “junkspace makes you uncertain where you are, obscures where you go, undoes where you were’ and ‘cannot be remembered”&nbsp;[4]. I think these places are in fact stripped of any meaning, fulfilling a single function: the ironic task of linking meanings. I see junkspace as a temporary condition; it only exists when we are in its presence. In other words, junkspace is a discontinuous position. The location of one’s body is irrelevant; it melts with the site, becoming part of it. The desire of reaching a known destination blurs the idea of perception and real time is temporarily put aside. But once out of it, the body splits from the site and junkspace vanishes. The arrival at journey’s end gives a meaning to where one had passed through to get there. Consequently, I only consider Rem Koolhaas’s idea of junkspace possible if one remains trapped in it. In J.G. Ballard’s novel Concrete Islandthe main protagonist Robert Maitland crashed his car through the highway’s metal barriers and found himself trapped between motorways, viaducts and headlights. After several unsuccessful attempts to move his injured body, he realized that he was entirely cut off since “the island was sealed off from the world around it by the high embankments on two sides and the wire mesh fence on its third”.[5]&nbsp;He remained marooned on his island, surrounded by cars yet invisible to their drivers focused only on their destinations. In my research journey I felt like Robert Maitland. Our quest implied travelling nowhere while simultaneously remaining in the junk. Two hundred and forty kilometers of asphalt, makes the A2 the second main highway of Portugal. Every forty kilometers there are two service stations sited right in front of each other with the exception of the first, which is unpaired. To succeed in our hunt we needed to find a pair of stations with the exact same qualities. Lisboa &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Seixal&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Palmela-Palmela&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Alcáçer do Sal- Alcáçer do SalA2&nbsp; &nbsp;Grandola- Grandola&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Aljustrel-Aljustrel&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Almodôvar-Almodôvar Algarve We started our enantiomorphic journey from Lisbon. I was left to examine the stations located on the western side, while my collaborator compared them to those on the eastern side.&nbsp; Our mission was to catalogue the physical qualities of the premises, and communicating them to my east side stand-in. We were divided by six tracks of high-volume car traffic, a place in where human presence is only allowed inside vehicles. Even though we were separated by a thirty minute ride we were still able to say “Hi” to each other by lifting our arms. Palmela was the first pair being analysed, located on the 31st Kilometer, this one was in fact not so ugly. A pale orange structure wrapped the glass cafeteria - which I read was due for replacement, probably by a standardized, colourful building more faithful to its function. An equivalent structure was confirmed by my partner on the eastern side, the building having exactly the same qualities while the parking lot could hold the same amount of cars. On the other hand the car wash exist only on my side, upsetting the symmetry. Similarities were also missing on the next four gas stations we examined. I had hope for perfect reflection but found only divergence. You can only see the differences between the objects when they are close together, because they are sometimes very subtle.[6] All phone calls had been recorded; a catalogue of similarities and differences was the soundtrack as we journeyed onward to the last remaining destination. The horizon was constantly being crossed by our wheels, leaving hopeless tracks on the wet tarmac. The clock revealed we were in the junk for almost ten hours – though we had perceived it subjectively as being several times that duration. Suspended in this galactic time-perception, ancient myths started to invade my senses, driving me to a state of pessimistic delirium. As I looked at the rear-view mirror, I saw Robert Smithson as my reflection reading The Gods of Mexico in the backseat. He read aloud the chapter about the journey of Quetzalcoatl&nbsp;[7], the morning star of Venus towards Tlapallan,where he would find the sun and resurrect his image. He was particularly interested in the episode of Uceutlatitlan, referenced in his ninth mirror display in the Yucatan.&nbsp; Quetzalcoatl rested near a tree, looked into his obsidian mirror and said “Now I become aged” and “suddenly he seized stones from the path and threw them against the unlucky tree. For many years thereafter the stones remained encrusted in the ancient tree.”[8] To Smithson “if one wished to be ingenious enough to erase time one requires mirrors, not rocks.”[9]&nbsp;Smithson told me about Quetzal’s journey as a failed search for an enantiomorphic half of a “mirror looking for its reflection but never quite finding it.”[10] Smithson and Quetzal bumped into my way as evil magicians from the old times but I was lucid enough to refuse their Teometl. [11] If I believed in Aztec gods I would have turned around and given up, but I had to find the other half of my Quetzalcoatl. Still stuck in the junk we reached 187th Kilometer, the location of our final service station at Almodôvar. It was around 7 pm when we started our examination in the empty building.&nbsp; A small house of unknown function, located a couple of meters from the gas station, was the first one on the list; the only apparent difference was a crack on the wall of the west façade, something that we deemed irrelevant – since the weight of time in a timeless location will not affect reflections. We compared fuel pumps, kiosk, gigantic green brushes in the carwash garage, the garage itself, cafeteria, picnic area, flags, poles, benches, sculptures (if that is what they really were), floor lines, car parks, metal coverings, playground, fire hydrants, trashcans, grass, blue, red, yellow, traffic signs, showers and neon signs. Every aspect was submitted to a meticulous dissection and – to our relief - the same qualities were present at both sites. From Lisbon, take Av. da Liberdade, at the roundabout take the 2nd exit onto R. Joaquim António de Aguiar heading to A2/A5-Cascais, continue onto Av. Eng Duarte Pacheco, take the exit toward Setúbal/Almada, merge onto IP7, continue onto A2/IP7, stay on the left at the fork to continue on A2/E1, follow signs for Algarve/Alcácer, continue on A2 for 137 Km, take the exit and the destination will be on your left. These are the directions to find Almodôvar’s Mirror-Site, a place where even a rusty pipe without a function has a twin, a random piece of wire mesh covers the exact same windows and even the storks are cautious enough to make nests on the same electricity poles. It was a dark night and there were no lights or shoulder markers, lines, railings or anything at all except the dark pavement moving through the landscape of the flats, rimmed by hills in the distance, but punctuated by stacks, towers, fumes and colored lights.[12] The return drive through the dark night was tough; although a new meaning had been given to a charmless pair of service stations, nothing was settled and we didn’t get out of the junk. It was like travelling on an unfinished highway, without a destination, where the departure was the destination itself. I have never experienced Spiral Jetty, but somehow I felt close to it. I returned to Lisbon in the same way I would return to the Spiral’s tail. Henrique Pavão, 2016 (text edited by Nicola Oxley and Nicolas de Oliveira 2019) [1] Robert Smithson, “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan”, in The writings of Robert Smithson, ed. Nancy Holt (New York: New York University Press, 1979), 94-103. [2] “Double Negative (artwork),” last modified October 31, 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Negative_(artwork) [3] Cormac Mcarthy, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West (London: Picador, 1989) [4] Rem Koolhaas, “Junkspace,” October 100 (2002): 175-190. [5] J.G. Ballard, Concrete Island, (London. Fourth State, 2011), 13. [6] Lingwood, James, “The Weight of Time” Bernd &amp; Hilla Becher Robert SmithsonField Trips (Porto: Museu Serralves, 2002), 73. [7] Among the Aztecs, Quetzalcoatl the feathered serpent, carried the inner meaning of the Most Precious Twin, since Quetzal was loosely used as a term for precious and beautiful things, and coatlmeans twin [8] C. A. Burland, “The Mystery of Quetzalcoatl” in The Gods Of Mexico, (London: Eyre &amp; Spottiswoode, 1967), 148-164. [9] Robert Smithson, “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan”, ibid. [10] ibid. [11] White wine made from maguey sap that was given to Quetzalcoatl in order to trouble his journey. The same black medicine, offered by Tezcatlipoca, was also what distorted his perception and made him leave Tollan. [12] Tony Smith. “Conversations with Samuel Wagstraff Jr.” In Theories And Documents Of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings, ed. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2012), 149.. Wherever I am not is the Place Where I am Myself 3.77 Seconds + Unfinished Past An oily dark cloud engulfs everything, blending water, earth and sky with such perfection that distinguishing them is not possible anymore. Everything is wet and black. The horizon is finally touchable. Space is at last homogenized. An oversized kaleidoscope where every object is out of scale reflecting and deflecting one another on an immensity of angles. By this time everything had to be moveable so as to avoid destruction,[1] It was with this premise that the tanks were created, in contrast to the bunkers, which almost seem to have been placed there as if begging to be pierced, exploded and cracked. I doubt that these monoliths were ever meant to survive throughout time; one can easily imagine the power of the enemy’s impact, just by glancing at the thickness of their walls. It is relevant to mention the artist’s desire for his works to be destroyed, as it is the only way to progress. However, giving stillness to the things created means the artist needs to be in constant movement. The collapsing of a work means the rising of the next one, forcing him to move in between them - his mobility exists on behalf of the one mobility of the works. By destruction he loses. That is all that matters. His steps are moved by the desire of constant loss. Nostalgia is what keeps his work awake. After all, is there anything more powerful than what we can no longer access? Absence draws a path leading to an emptiness that needs to be filled. It is a mode of travelling in which clean footprints are left behind by the irreversibility of his steps, driven by the need for recovery. As he walks through the ruins of his past he sees a future built out of the same mental cinders. It strikes me how much we can destroy and build just by travelling. This liminal act is where creation takes place. It is alongside this travel that interment comes into play; it is also when seeds are thrown through the window of a car and left alone on a fertile ground for something to grow. Did you ever find yourself digging up something you have buried a few years before? If so I should tell you for sure that its history will never be fully recovered because the past always stays silent and never wants to be disturbed, but I guess you will reach the conclusion that you are acting dangerously by yourself. However, if you do want to take that risk, then the fulfilment of being reminded of its absence might help you to bury it again but this time in an impenetrable, bulletproof grave. We can only forget by being reminded of the absence of things. A massive grave was found on the outskirts of the city, more than 100 hectares of vertical destruction accumulated over 130 years, allowed for the vertical construction of the adjacent architecture. The quarry is surrounded by luxury condominiums, built around its rim, and its inhabitants face perpetually onto a steep canyon, probably unaware that the place they stand on was taken from the place they look at. The quarry was once a loud and dusty place, a limestone theatre whose play was endlessly sound tracked by rubber and cement. After leaving it behind one would constantly hear the feathers of the pillow drumming the sound of the traffic over the rusty bridge. It rests now neglected and exposed to emptiness, like the bunkers on the Atlantic coast, where destruction acts calmly, echoing over a vast sea of drowned memories. In such places, there is always a fraction being consumed by the absence of men’s hands, because the hands of man delay space’s intentions for objects, postponing their natural deterioration. Now, picture this: a tall Scandinavian man wearing a bathrobe and having a coffee on the balcony of his luxury apartment, doomed with a view of a dusty dungeon beneath his feet. The hole works as a reminder of his foundations, as a monumental vacancy that defines, without trying, the memory traces of an abandoned set of futures.[2]Is this giant cupola a monument to the past, or is it a monument to the future? A romantic ruin or a ruin in reverse? It is hard to tell. Henrique Pavão, 2017 [1] Paul Virilio, Bunker Archeology (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994), 41. [2] Robert Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey” in The Writings of Robert Smithson, ed. Nancy Holt (New York: New York University Press, 1979), 55. https://henriquepavao.com/News Wed, 06 Feb 2019 18:26:13 +0000 Henrique Pavão https://henriquepavao.com/News 22 Jan - 2026 - 28 Jun 2026Auto dos anfitriões. &nbsp;Obras da Coleção Leal Rios na Coleção de Serralves Curated by Ricardo Nicolau&nbsp; Serralves Museum Porto — PT&nbsp;23 May 2026 - 27 Sep 2026Ultratremor Curated by Germano DusháMNAC - Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea Lisbon — PT 17-18 Jun 2026A Ilha &nbsp;A project by Marco Martins&nbsp;Museu Mineiro do LousalGrândola — PT Past18 Jun 2026 - 21 Jun 2026 Art Basel Galeria Pedro CeraBasel - Switzerland 21 Nov 2025 - 3 May 2026The Self as MultipleCurated by Carolina QUintelaMACAM - Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando MartinsLisbon — PT4 March - 8 March ARCO MADRIDGaleria Pedro CeraMadrid - ES 10 Oct 2025 - 30 Oct 2025The Ultimate Romance Ateliê FidalgaSão Paulo — BR 4 Sep 2025 - 5 Oct 2025 Imagens intangíveisCurated by Filippo De Tomasi, Isabel Stein, Maura Grimaldi Carpintarias de São LázaroLisbon — PT23 May 2025 - 18 Jul 2025Ghost Ranch Rialto6Lisbon — PT 26 Sep 2024 - 22 Fev 2025...daquele que é (des)objeto IICurated by Miguel Leal Rios Leal Rios Foundation Lisbon — PT 1 Nov 2024 - 3 Nov 2024 Artissima Bruno Múrias GalleryTurin — IT 26 Sep 2024 - 28 Nov 2024Prémio Norberto Fernandes Forum AlticeLisbon — PT 13 Jul 2024 - 22 Sep 2024Imaginário Coletivo / Obras da Coleção de Arte Contemporânea do EstadoCurated by Sanda Vieira JürgensMuseu de Aveiro / Santa Joana Aveiro — PT 5 Sep 2024 - 8 Sep 2024“SEYMOUR”Various Others Munich — DE 18 May 2024 - 27 Jul 2024 HEAVY METAL Galeria Bruno Múrias Lisbon — PT 28 Jun 2024 - 25 Aug 2024 The Ultimate Romance FARRA - with Rialto6Elvas — PT 28 Jun 2024 - 25 Aug 2024...daquele que é (des)objeto ICurated by Miguel Leal Rios FARRA - with Leal Rios Foundation Elvas — PT 17 Nov 2023 - 7 Apr 2024ITINERARIOS XXVIIICurated by Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz Centro BotínSantander — ES 2 Nov 2023 - 14 Apr 2024 SÓ PORQUE FOI, E VOOUCurated by Colégio das Artes MNAC - Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea do Chiado Lisbon — PT 14 Mar 2024 - 6 Apr 2024 Blind Taste ARBAG Curated by Pedro Ventura Matos and Ricardo PassaporteLisbon — PT 26 Jan 2024 - 8 Mar 2024 Wainting Around to Die Galeria da Casa A.MolderLisbon — PT 10 Jul 2023 - 14 Jan 2024 CONTRAVISÕES / A Fotografia na Coleção António Cachola. Parte 2Curated by Sérgio Mah Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas (MACE)Elvas — PT 6 Jul 2023 - 7pm Oxímoro / Oxymoron : Henrique Pavão and Joachim Koester(Book Launch)&nbsp;Texts: Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues , Nicola Oxley and Nicolas de Oliveira Kindred Spirit Lisbon — PT 24 May 2023 - 13 Jul 2023 Oxímoro / OxymoronWith Joachim KoesterCurated by Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues Kindred Spirit Lisbon — PT 13 Apr 2023 - 18:30H OVERLAPArtist talk with Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues Hangar - Centro de Investigação ArtísticaLisbon — PT 3 Mar 2023 - 5 Mar 2023 Estudo Do Meio (18+)Curated by PURGA &nbsp;Carpintarias de São LazaroLisbon — PT 12 Nov 2022 - 26 Feb 2023 BF22 - Photography Biennial Curated by Ana Rito Vila Franca de Xira — PT My Father Sings the Chorus of Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson (sound piece) in Contemporânea#8 22 Feb 2023 - 26 Feb 2023 ARCO MADRID Bruno Múrias Gallery / Booth 9A17Madrid — ES 18 Nov 2022 - 19 Nov 2022ISCP Fall Open Studios ISCPNew York — USA 1 Sep 2022 - 31 Nov 2022 Artist in Residence - ISCP - International Studio &amp; Curatorial Program With the support of FLAD - The Luso - American Development Foundation ISCP New York — USA 30 Jun 2022 - 19:00H Umbigo #81 Launch - Ecdysis (Visual Essay) : Henrique Pavão Brotéria Lisbon — PT 1 May 2022 - 16:00HBook Launch &nbsp;- Six Hours and One Minute : Henrique Pavão a book by Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley The publication chronicles the recent durational performance and exhibition “The D.E.A.D. Man” by Henrique Pavão; the launch features an informal public conversation between the authors and the artist. Bruno Múrias GalleryLisbon — PT 23 Fev 2022 - 27 Fev 2022ARCO MADRID Bruno Múrias GalleryMadrid — ES 3 Feb 2022 - 17 Feb 2022The.D.E.A.D.ManPerformance 18:00 - 00:01 | 3 Feb 2022 Text by Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley Appleton Box Lisbon — PT 5 Nov 2021 - 7 Nov 2021Crownshy Curated by Max FrisingerOutpost - Casa das Arribas, Sintra — PT 13 Sep 2021 - 19 Sep 2021&nbsp;ARCO LISBOABruno Múrias Gallery&nbsp;Lisbon — PT 5 Apr 2021 - 13 Jul 2021Flora Curated by Sara Antónia Matos &amp; Pedro FaroAtelier Júlio Pomar Lisbon — PT 7 Jul 2021 - 11 Jul 2021 ARCO MADRID Booth Galeria Bruno MúriasMadrid — ES 2 Jul 2021- 18:00HBack to The Future Boy - Book Launch&nbsp; + One Last Longing - Screening ZDB - Galeria Zé dos Bois Lisbon — PT 30 Apr - 30 May 2021A Longa Sombra Curated by Horácio FrutuosoSala de exposição Maus Hábitos, Porto — PT 5 May 2021 - 9 May 2021Sea of Tranquility | FRIEZE NEW YORKFrame Section with Bruno Múrias Gallery - Frieze New York at The Shed, Manhattan — USA 13 Mar 2021 - 24 Apr 2021Red Flower Galeria&nbsp;Bruno Múrias&nbsp;Lisbon — PT 26 Jul 2020 - 16 Sep 2020Fazer de Casa Labirinto Curated by Ana Cachola &amp; Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues Balcony Gallery Lisbon — PT 30 Aug 2020&nbsp; Too Old to Die Young Henrique Pavão &amp; Horácio Frutuoso O Stand&nbsp; Lisbon — PT 15 Fev 2020 - 14 Jun 2020Unfinished Past (revisited) Curated by Ana Anacleto CAV Coimbra — PT 5 Jun 2020 - 20:58 - 6 Jun 2020 - 06:12One Last LongingOnline Screening - http://wrongwrong.net/article/one-last-longing7 Dec 2019 - 16 Fev 2020&nbsp;Depois do Estouro Curated by Tomás Abreu Galeria Municipal do Porto — PT 21 Nov 2019 - 30 Jan 2020 Tomar a verdade, #1 para 4UMA LULIK_ Lisbon— PT 28 Nov 2019 - 05 Jan 2020 Apollo Porta 14. Lisbon — PT 14 Nov 2019 — 18:30 - 20:30H Almodôvar Mirror-Site - Book Launch &nbsp;STET, Lisbon — PT 25 Oct - 27 Oct 2019Focus Curated by João Ribas Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Toronto — CAN25 Oct - 27 Oct 2019Art Toronto Booth UMA LULIK_ Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Toronto — CAN 19 Sep 2019 — 18H - 00HThe Artist is on the Line A project by Carolina Trigueiros @artistisontheline 15 May - 9 Sep 2019EDP Foundation’s New Artists Award Curated by Inês Grosso, Sara Antónia Matos and João Silvério MAAT Lisbon — PT&nbsp; 8 Jun - 6 Jul 2019Almodôvar Mirror-SiteCurated by Sérgio Fazenda RodriguesSE8 Gallery London — UK&nbsp;16 May - 19 May 2019&nbsp;ARCO LISBOA&nbsp;Booth UMA LULIK_&nbsp; Lisbon — PT&nbsp; 1 Apr - 13 Apr 20191/3 MeelPress Curated by João Silvério Bermondsey Project Space London — UK 15 Nov - 18 Nov 2018ART DÜSSELDORF Post Lehman Sector - Booth UMA LULIK_ Düsseldorf — DE 25 Oct - 16 Nov&nbsp; 2018O Futuro do Presente: Simples ou Composto?&nbsp; F.B.A.U.L - Faculdade de Belas Artes Lisboa — PT14 Jul - 15 Sep 2018 289 a project by Pedro Cabrita Reis 289 Faro — PT 10 May - 19 Jul 2018Now I Became AgedCurated by Sérgio MahUMA LULIK_ Lisbon — PT17 May - 20 May 2018&nbsp;ARCO LISBOA Booth UMA LULIK_ Lisbon — PT 11 Apr - 15 Apr 2018 Unfinished PastCurated by Luiza Teixeira SP Arte, Sector “Solo” São Paulo — BR 23 Mar - 11 Apr 2018B.A.T. Bon à tirer. MEEL, PressAppleton Square Lisbon — PT 28 Oct 2017 - 21 Jan 2018&nbsp;antes e depois de antesCurated by Delfim Sardo Culturgest Porto — PT 11 Nov - 30 Dec 2017&nbsp;AnoZero’17Curated by Delfim Sardo and Luiza Teixeira de Freitas AnoZero Biennial Coimbra — PT 17 Fev - 9 Mar 2017&nbsp;Wherever I am not is the Place Where I am MyselfAppleton Square Lisbon — PT 28 Oct - 27 Nov 2016Edstrandska Stiftelsens Stipendiater 2016Curated by Gertrud Sandqvist. KHM Gallery, Malmö. SE 13 May - 28 May 2016Fallen Between CracksKHM Gallery, Malmö — SE https://henriquepavao.com/About Fri, 08 Feb 2019 15:21:10 +0000 Henrique Pavão https://henriquepavao.com/About Lisbon, 1991 &nbsp; &nbsp;Lives and works in Lisbon&nbsp;henriquespavao@gmail.com Represented by Galeria Pedro Cera (Lisbon and Madrid)&nbsp; https://pedrocera.com/ info@pedrocera.com Henrique Pavão employs sculpture, video, sound, and photography to assemble scattered fragments into unexpected encounters that evoke the ritualistic, the enigmatic, and the anachronistic. By working with entropy as creative matter, echoing the canonical tropes of 1970s conceptual art, his practice unfolds within a broader territory aligned with open-ended processes, where the agency of materials or chance determines the outcome. From the manual dexterity that arises in the unforeseen and the repetitive gesture, Pavão maps a poetic cartography in which artefact and ruin emerge as signs of a suspended temporality, between anticipation and absence. EDUCATION 2014-2016 Master of Fine Arts / MFA Malmö Art Academy, Lund University — SE (Professor Joachim Koester) 2012-2013 Bachelor of Fine Arts / Exchange Nottingham Trent University — UK 2010-2013 Bachelor of Sculpture / BFA Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon — PT 2009-2010 Bachelor of Architecture Faculty of Architecture, Autonoma University of Lisbon — PT SOLO SHOWS 2025 Ghost Ranch&nbsp; Rialto6, Lisbon — PT 2024 The Ultimate Romance&nbsp; FARRA with Rialto6, Elvas — PT Heavy Metal&nbsp; Bruno Múrias Gallery, Lisbon — PT Waiting Around to Die Galeria da Casa A.Molder, Lisbon — PT 2023Oxímoro / Oxymoron with Joachim KoesterKindred Spirit, Lisbon — PTCurated by Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues 2022 The D.E.A.D Man APPLETON (BOX), Lisbon — PT 2021 Sea of Tranquility&nbsp; Frame Section - Frieze NY at The Shed — US with Bruno Múrias Gallery Red Flower Bruno Múrias Gallery, Lisbon — PT 2020 Unfinished Past (revisited) CAV, Coimbra — PT Curated by Ana Anacleto&nbsp; 2019 Apollo&nbsp; Porta 14, Lisbon — PT Almodôvar Mirror-Site SE8 Gallery, London — UK Curated by Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues&nbsp; 2018 Now I Became Aged UMA LULIK_ , Lisbon — PTCurated by Sérgio Mah Unfinished Past SP Arte - Sector "Solo", São Paulo — BRCurated by Luiza Teixeira de Freitas 2017 antes e depois de antesCulturgest Porto, Oporto — PTCurated by Delfim Sardo Wherever I am not is the Place Where I am Myself Appleton Square, Lisbon — PT 2016 Fallen Between Cracks KHM Gallery, Malmö — SE 2013 Transform the Space Using the Space IISotão, Lisbon — PT&nbsp; SELECTED GROUP SHOWSUltratremorMNAC - The National Museum of Contemporary Art | Museu do Chiado, Lisbon — PT Curated by Germano Dushá Auto dos anfitriões. &nbsp;Obras da Coleção Leal Rios na Coleção de SerralvesSerralves Museum,&nbsp;Porto — PT Curated by Ricardo Nicolau 2025The Self as MultipleMACAM - Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando Martins,&nbsp;Lisbon — PT Curated by Carolina Quintela Imagens intangíveis Carpintarias de São Lázaro, Lisbon — PT Curated by&nbsp;Filippo De Tomasi, Isabel Stein, Maura Grimaldi ...daquele que é (des)objeto IIILeal Rios Foundation, Lisbon — PTCurated by Miguel Leal Rios O Fio Que Nos Une&nbsp; MACE, Elvas — PT 2024 ...daquele que é (des)objeto IILeal Rios Foundation, Lisbon — PTCurated by Miguel Leal Rios Prémio Norberto Fernandes Forum Altice Lisbon — PT Seymour&nbsp; Various Others, Munich — DE Imaginário Coletivo / Obras da Coleção de Arte Contemorânea do EstadoMuseu de Aveiro / Santa Joana, Aveiro — PT Curated by Sanda Vieira Jürgens ...daquele que é (des)objeto I FARRA with Leal Rios Foundation, Elvas — PT Curated by Miguel Leal Rios&nbsp; Blind Taste ARBAG, Lisbon — PT Curated by Pedro Ventura Matos and Ricardo Passaporte 2023 ITINERARIOS XXVIII Centro Botín, Santander — ESCurated by&nbsp;Bárbara Rodíguez Muñoz Só Porque Foi e Voou MNAC -&nbsp;The National Museum of Contemporary Art | Museu do Chiado, Lisbon — PT Coord. by Ana Rito and José de Maçãs Carvalho Contravisões: A fotografia na Coleção António Cachola MACE, Elvas — PTCurated by Sérgio Mah &nbsp; Estudo do Meio (18+) Carpintarias de São Lázaro, Lisbon — PT Curated by PURGA&nbsp; 2022 ISCP 2022 Fall Open Studios ISCP - International Studio &amp; Curatorial Program, New York — USA BF22 - Photography Biennial&nbsp; Museu Municipal de Vila Franca de Xira — PT Curated by Ana Rito&nbsp; 2021 Crownshy Outpost - Casa das Arribas, Sintra — PT Curated by Max Frisinger&nbsp; A Longa Sombra&nbsp; Sala de Exposição Maus Hábitos, Oporto — PT Curated by Horácio Frutuoso Flora Atelier Museu Júlio Pomar, Lisbon — PT Curated by Sara Antónia Matos &amp; Pedro Faro 2020 Fazer de Casa Labirinto&nbsp; Balcony Gallery, Lisbon — PT Curated by Ana Cachola &amp; Sérgio Fazenda RodriguesToo Old to Die Young with Horácio Frutuoso. O Stand, Lisbon — PT 2019 Depois do Estouro&nbsp; Galeria Municipal do Porto, Oporto — PT Curated by Tomás Abreu Tomar a verdade, #1 para 4 UMA&nbsp; LULIK_, Lisbon — PT FocusMetro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto — CAN Curated by João Ribas&nbsp; EDP Foundation’s New Artists Award MAAT - Museu de Arte, Arquitectura e Tecnologia, Lisbon — PT Curated by Inês Grosso 1/3 MeelPress Bermondsey Project Space, London — UK Curated by João Silvério 2018 O Futuro do Presente: Simples ou Composto? Faculdade de Belas Artes de Lisboa — PTCurated by Ângela Ferreira and Victor dos Reis 289 289, Faro — PT Curated by Pedro Cabrita Reis&nbsp; B.A.T. Bon à tirer. MEEL Press. Appleton Square, Lisbon — PT 2017 Anozero'17 / BiennialCoimbra — PTCurated by Delfim Sardo and Luiza Teixeira de Freitas 2016 Edstrandska Stiftelsens Stipendiater 2016 KHM Gallery, Malmö — SECurated by Gertrud Sandqvist The Annual Exhibition&nbsp; Malmö Art Academy — SE Grant Holder Show The Royal Academy of Arts, Stockholm — SE 2015 The Annual Exhibition Malmö Art Academy — SE 2014 New Students ExhibitionKHM Gallery, Malmö — SE 2013Finalistas Escultura FBAUL 12/13 / BA Exhibition ISEG, Lisbon — PT 2012 Museucampus MNAC - The National Museum of Contemporary Art | Museu do Chiado, Lisbon — PT Curated by Markus Ambach SCREENINGS &amp; PERFORMANCES2022 The D.E.A.D Man (18:00 - 00:01)&nbsp; APPLETON (BOX), Lisbon — PT 2021 One Last Longing ZDB - Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon — PT 2020 One Last Longing AIR 351, Cascais — PT AWARDS &amp; GRANTS2024 Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Grant for Artistic Creation Altice Foundation’s Young Artists Award / Nomination ( Honorable Mention) 2022 FLAD - Grant for Artistic Residencies in the USA | ISCP - International Studio &amp; Curatorial Program NY 2021 Fundación Marcelino Botín Grant | Centro Botín, Santander — ES 2019EDP Foundation’s New Artists Award | MAAT / Nomination 2016 Prémio Novo Banco Revelação | Serralves Foundation / Nomination Edstrandska Stiftelsens Stipendium Konstakademien Stockholm Stipendium 2015Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation&nbsp;Scholarship (MFA - Malmö Art Academy)&nbsp; RESIDENCIES2025Ateliê Fidalga. / Paulo Reis Residency, São Paulo&nbsp; — BR NO ENTULHO - ArtWorks, Oporto — PT 2022 ISCP - International Studio &amp; Curatorial Program NY — USA 2019-2020 AIR 351, Cascais — PT SELECTED PUBLICATIONSGhost Ranch. Henrique Pavão.&nbsp; Pub. Henrique Pavão &amp; Rialto6 ITINERARIOS XXVIII. Pub. Centro Botín (catalogue) BF22 - Photography Biennial (catalogue) Oxímoro / Oxymoron : Henrique Pavão and Joachim Koester. Pub. Kindred Spirit (catalogue)&nbsp; Contravisões: A fotografia na Coleção António Cachola. Pub. MACE Elvas After the Bang / Depois do Estouro. Pub. Galeria Municipal do Porto (catalogue) My Father Sings the Chorus of Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson (sound piece)&nbsp;in&nbsp;Contemporânea#8 - SOM (LP)&nbsp; Ecdysis (Visual Essay) Umbigo Magazine#81 Six Hours and One Minute : Henrique Pavão. Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley. Pub. Mulberry Tree Press Choro Eterno and White Bright Beautiful Heaven in Poemas Tardios. Henrique Segurado.&nbsp;Pub. Averno O STAND 1.0 (catalogue) Back to the Future Boy. Henrique Pavão. Pub.Galeria Bruno Múrias&nbsp; Fazer de Casa Labirinto. Balcony Gallery (catalogue) One Last Longing (Visual Essay) Wrong Wrong Magazine#16 (Less and More) Prémio Novos Artistas Fundação EDP 2019 (catalogue)&nbsp; Almodôvar Mirror Site. Henrique Pavão. Pub. Mulberry Tree Press 289 (catalogue) &nbsp;O Futuro do Presente: Simples ou Composto? (catalogue) The Eternity of the City / Visual Essay Contemporânea 05/2018; Urban Drifting Lisboa X + 1 APPLETON SQUARECurar e Reparar / Healing and Repairing. Anozero'17 (catalogue) &nbsp;Edstrandska Stiftelsens Stipendiater 2016 (catalogue) Fallen Between Cracks / EssayMalmö Art Academy Yearbook 2015-2016 Novo Banco Revelação | Serralves Foundation Finalistas Escultura FBAUL 12/13 (catalogue) COLLECTIONS MACAM - Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando Martins, Lisbon — PT Maria e Armando Cabral / Rialto6 Collection, Lisbon — PT EDP / MAAT Foundation Collection, Lisbon — PT Portuguese State Contemporary Art Collection - CACE&nbsp; — PT EGEAC - Lisbon Municipality Collection — PT António Cachola Collection – MACE / Elvas — PT FLR - Leal Rios Foundation, Lisbon — PT&nbsp; Figueiredo Ribeiro Collection, Abrantes — PTSantander Consumer Collection, Lisbon — PT VdA Collection– Vieira de Almeida, SA, Lisbon — PT Caixa de Crédito Agrícola Mútuo de Mafra, Mafra — PT OTHER PROJECTS2026 A Ilha a project by Marco Martrins Minas do Lousal, Grândola —PT 2025 The Ultimate Romance Ateliê Fidalga, São Paulo — BR 2019The Artist is on the Line a project by Carolina Trigueiros. Lisbon — PT https://henriquepavao.com/Home-Projects Wed, 06 Feb 2019 18:26:13 +0000 Henrique Pavão https://henriquepavao.com/Home-Projects https://henriquepavao.com/Ghost-Ranch Mon, 23 Jun 2025 19:26:41 +0000 Henrique Pavão https://henriquepavao.com/Ghost-Ranch <img width="7677" height="5120" width_o="7677" height_o="5120" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fdc36e16bf49a11f7ba180848d83ce972e63c9ec7bc22ee9341c8c18cb8b8d8e/Ghost-Ranch-7.jpg" data-mid="234937114" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fdc36e16bf49a11f7ba180848d83ce972e63c9ec7bc22ee9341c8c18cb8b8d8e/Ghost-Ranch-7.jpg" /> <img width="7677" height="5120" width_o="7677" height_o="5120" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/dba030585c82c2507626c6af37223ddc19054bb82466a50579c7624e261980d1/Ghost-Ranch-8.jpg" data-mid="234937115" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/dba030585c82c2507626c6af37223ddc19054bb82466a50579c7624e261980d1/Ghost-Ranch-8.jpg" /> <img width="7677" height="5120" width_o="7677" height_o="5120" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b37de7df8dd6e97eb2c56bf38e640123e9f4d0539ef7fb87275ee72a26770929/Ghost-Ranch-9.jpg" data-mid="234937116" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b37de7df8dd6e97eb2c56bf38e640123e9f4d0539ef7fb87275ee72a26770929/Ghost-Ranch-9.jpg" /> <img width="5120" height="7677" width_o="5120" height_o="7677" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a6da6aaa544d59feaf61f5ac73722424e74cb2492e7904c69dddb734def1c795/Ghost-Ranch-12.jpg" data-mid="234937118" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a6da6aaa544d59feaf61f5ac73722424e74cb2492e7904c69dddb734def1c795/Ghost-Ranch-12.jpg" /> <img width="5120" height="7677" width_o="5120" height_o="7677" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/260b7afe406924f372d1fd71b84282b3405b85e0a3fec634ec093acad477a807/Ghost-Ranch-11.jpg" data-mid="234937117" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/260b7afe406924f372d1fd71b84282b3405b85e0a3fec634ec093acad477a807/Ghost-Ranch-11.jpg" /> <img width="7677" height="5120" width_o="7677" height_o="5120" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d3683037f454a8859c1b2a638845bd4e3c3f0d19d6fa88bcd72e778d07ba3127/Ghost-Ranch-14.jpg" data-mid="234958177" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d3683037f454a8859c1b2a638845bd4e3c3f0d19d6fa88bcd72e778d07ba3127/Ghost-Ranch-14.jpg" /> <img width="5120" height="7677" width_o="5120" height_o="7677" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/78fb707ea06ff2599a8230e3cf86ac641034677dcdd1aad293526a75365c273f/Ghost-Ranch-1.jpg" data-mid="234937111" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/78fb707ea06ff2599a8230e3cf86ac641034677dcdd1aad293526a75365c273f/Ghost-Ranch-1.jpg" /> <img width="7677" height="5120" width_o="7677" height_o="5120" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/381bc2903e6968c9b63ffa45e9f6f2b059c43a5043bb3d2ac96fc6aa920d66a2/Ghost-Ranch-4.jpg" data-mid="234937112" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/381bc2903e6968c9b63ffa45e9f6f2b059c43a5043bb3d2ac96fc6aa920d66a2/Ghost-Ranch-4.jpg" /> <img width="7677" height="5120" width_o="7677" height_o="5120" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c5c1f5139bb23362326c0afe990025d8cb8e539fcce294bf427341e0151a2963/Ghost-Ranch-5.jpg" data-mid="234937113" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c5c1f5139bb23362326c0afe990025d8cb8e539fcce294bf427341e0151a2963/Ghost-Ranch-5.jpg" /> <img width="5120" height="7677" width_o="5120" height_o="7677" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6fc411f715de025bc1fa88cf8026e65ccb9b53c565b7707ee9dcbc44a6643812/Ghost-Ranch-2.jpg" data-mid="234937107" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6fc411f715de025bc1fa88cf8026e65ccb9b53c565b7707ee9dcbc44a6643812/Ghost-Ranch-2.jpg" /> In 1956 and 1957 Edward Abbey enrolled as a ranger for the Arches National Park, isolating himself from the world. He spent a long period in the Colorado landscapes, living in a trailer, reporting on wildlife and the changes in what was then an untouched part of the world, before it was torn apart by human impact and tourism. His reports were published in a 1968 book – Desert Solitaire or a Season in the Wilderness. Around the same time, a young Michael Heizer, tired of the vibrating New York art scene, traveled to the Nevada desert with his trailer where he stayed while building his life project – City (1970 – 2022). Way before these two characters ever planned their commitment to solitude, Georgia O’Keeffe was going for long walks on the New Mexican deserts looking for bones and other elements to integrate in her paintings. After the unexpected underwhelming reception of his first studio album – Five Leaves Left (1969)– and struggling to perform it live, Nick Drake dropped out of Cambridge and rented a room in North London, where he locked himself playing his guitar and writing what is now, after his death, considered one of the best folk albums – Bryter Layter (1971). Playing an instrument requires method. Repeating the same notes over and over again brings you into a trance- like state that is itself an isolation from whatever surrounds you and probably the most obsessive act one can engage in. I have always struggled with the fact that I was a better artist than a musician, but somehow music has always informed my practice and now I understand that its repetitive aspect was a way to replace my fluctuating lack of studio labor. During the preparation of this exhibition, I lived in a rammed earth house built with the soil of the land where it stands; a construction technique used to insulate the interior from extreme high and low temperatures. The house is located in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, an area that could become inhabitable by the end of the twenty first century according to some specialists. Climate changes are causing severe droughts. The air and the wind are bone dry; from May onwards, everything is the color of steel. The nearest town is a twenty-minute drive and for days one might not see a single soul. Some film directors think this region resembles the Wild West the most; unsurprisingly someSpaghetti Westerns were shot in this part of the world. The pieces in this exhibition – Ghost Ranch and Bull Guitar Drag (after Christian Marclay) – are the result of a series of actions that took place in this specific location and during a period of six months. In complete solitude.&nbsp; One of the motifs of Western movies is the use of static, romantic views of the land, which function as premonitory moments that anticipate a gun fight or other kinds of violence. Throughout the dry season groups of vultures are often seen patrolling the skies, invading what is apparently a tranquil, beautiful and silent landscape, looking for food. During one of my walks, the scavenging birds led me to a bull skeleton. In the footsteps of Georgia O’Keeffe, I managed to collect a big part of the skeleton except for some bones that were carried away by wild cats, foxes, vultures and other animals. I made fifty-nine molds of every bone of this skeleton with my bare hands. These molds were then filled with the earth from where they were found, turning death into a resurrection. Every sculpture now carries the soil of a land on its way to extinction. Mold making is studio labor and, therefore, akin to playing an instrument. One tirelessly repeats the same movements with the goal of repeating the same shape forever. For many musicians, instruments are carriers and they are limited to a certain number of songs – contemporary pianist Nils Frahm, keeps on buying and selling keyboards until they run dry. The guitar has always been a McGuffin* inWestern movies – like in Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar. A cowboy carries a guitar strapped to his back, a replacement for his addiction to guns. There are two guitars in this exhibition. The first, a Fender Jazzmaster tuned to open D minor&nbsp;[1], was left alone on the red rocky soil, facing the rust of sundown with the west wind blowing over its metal strings, the sound is both melancholic and spiritual as the wind never blows the same way, thus creating different random melodies often interrupted by the landing of dirt particles and small insects on it. The instrument signals the dry air that killed the bull whose skeleton I found. This sound piece was the key for the project to unravel; the weeping guitar works as a soundtrack for the sculptures, scattered inside a vitrine without any particular order. This vitrine is meant to be walked over, as in many archeological sites, from the Acropolis to Teotihuacán. Contrary to these places one can also inhabit the ruins seeing them from underneath, like a corpse inside its grave. While the first guitar’s presence is phantasmal, represented by its sound, blasting out of two Marshall cabinets used in big stages, the second – a Squire Mustang – although physically present, carries a ghost of its action and its musician. In a long interview with Seán O’Hagan&nbsp;[2], Nick Cave reflects on his creative process mentioning that his songs always depart from images. See for instance the strong imagery behind Hollywood&nbsp;[3]: A mountain lion roaming Los Angeles’ valleys, with their big mansions, in the night. Much like songs, artworks can remain artworks in their suggestive state even if they are never materialized. Mike Kelley’s Monkey Island (1982-3) is a collection of plans, writings and references that inform the viewer on how the finished work would look like. Its spiritual aspect makes it even more interesting than a tangible version of the island. Bull Guitar Drag (after Christian Marclay), witnessed a failed attempt to record the sound of a 600kg brown bull dragging an electric guitar&nbsp;[4] along the very same fields where the skeleton of the other bull was found – there is no footage of the action, as the cameras were not set yet and only a ten-second sound recording is left. The bull defeated my work, destroying the guitar, playing at its own will. The animal is glorified to a godlike state, a hero, the musician I have always dreamt to be. This moment is now contained inside a destroyed electric guitar, like the soil inside the molds. This is now a relic as many other guitars sold in auctions for millions of dollars because they bear witness to historical moments&nbsp;[5]. Ghost Ranch is a Western; a duel, between life and death. It is my homage, my farewell letter, my gift to this landscape. My plea for forgiveness. "Looking back, I can see that I had a relationship with the landscape that in one sense was very embodied, and at the same time existed independently of me, with a history that preceded and did not include me."[6] This project is dedicated to the Love between Teresa and Rui. Henrique Pavão, 2025 *The term was introduced by Alfred Hitchcock. It consists of an object (device or event) of a symbolic nature whose relevance is not inherent, but nevertheless is crucial to drive the plot and the characters’ actions. &nbsp; [1] Open or alternate tunings often used in blues and country music mean tunning the guitar strings to a specific combination of notes that when strummed (without placing the fingers on the fretboard) the guitar plays a full chord. D minor is considered the saddest chord in western musical vocabulary. The extensive use of alternate tunings was the main reason for Nick Drake’s difficulty to perform live, forcing him to spent a fair amount of time retuning his guitar between songs. [2]Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan - Faith, Hope and Carnage, 2022. [3] Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – Ghosteen, 2019. [4] Proportionally, the weight of the bull and the electric guitar is equivalent to a human carrying a pen in his pocket. [5] Kurt Cobain’s Martin D-18E used in Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance (1989) was sold for six million dollars in 2020. [6] Lucy Raven - https://www.artforum.com/columns/lucy-raven-on-concrete-cinema-and-reimagining-the-genre-of-the-western-249695/ Ghost Ranch, 2025Installation views, 'Ghost Ranch', Rialto6, 2025 Ghost Ranch, 2025 Bull skeleton made with the earth from where it was found (terracotta), Marshall DSL - 100HR (tube amp head), 2 x Marshall MR1960 B (guitar cabinet), re-amping box, sound (44 minutes of dry air amplified through an electric guitar tunned to open D minor, loop) Variable dimensions Sound Mix and Master - Moritz Kerschbaumer Technical support: ar.co - Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual&nbsp;Photo — Bruno Lopes Bull Guitar Drag (after Christian Marclay), 2025 Electric guitar 101 x 31 x 4 cmPhoto — Vasco Stocker Vilhena&nbsp; Bull Guitar Drag (after Christian Marclay), was carefully overseen by a specialized team to ensure full respect for animal welfare. No animals were harmed in the making of this exhibition, and all materials were sourced ethically and responsibly https://henriquepavao.com/Heavy-Metal Thu, 27 Jun 2024 14:36:09 +0000 Henrique Pavão https://henriquepavao.com/Heavy-Metal <img width="7677" height="5121" width_o="7677" height_o="5121" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/624fb59a5b026822e2345922dd63ac729282a0646633472bd83233377a6b3034/HP-6.jpg" data-mid="213726308" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/624fb59a5b026822e2345922dd63ac729282a0646633472bd83233377a6b3034/HP-6.jpg" /> <img width="7677" height="5121" width_o="7677" height_o="5121" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fcff7882a3c6771a68e3748e737b3a03b4b580b36b610d8266e725278163d3c4/HP-5.jpg" data-mid="213726309" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fcff7882a3c6771a68e3748e737b3a03b4b580b36b610d8266e725278163d3c4/HP-5.jpg" /> <img width="7677" height="5121" width_o="7677" height_o="5121" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5941141d62cde43bd842c8d77e0681579b04c505f45113718554e7a218f404a0/HP-4.jpg" data-mid="213726307" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5941141d62cde43bd842c8d77e0681579b04c505f45113718554e7a218f404a0/HP-4.jpg" /> <img width="7677" height="5120" width_o="7677" height_o="5120" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4f97b6c13d5b5e4ee2415368709ffb688d2e7f0b873442d9e6cf2059bf894c58/HP-10.jpg" data-mid="213726341" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4f97b6c13d5b5e4ee2415368709ffb688d2e7f0b873442d9e6cf2059bf894c58/HP-10.jpg" /> <img width="7677" height="5120" width_o="7677" height_o="5120" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/66ed28443dd747ddfe8c83177f9740768764122815a75591e35ae36946e649cc/HP-18.jpg" data-mid="213726317" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/66ed28443dd747ddfe8c83177f9740768764122815a75591e35ae36946e649cc/HP-18.jpg" /> <img width="5121" height="7677" width_o="5121" height_o="7677" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4778495e179bca97ae7ac026e06b04208714c33017b3c77068a14bbb8ee32757/HP-1.jpg" data-mid="234937367" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4778495e179bca97ae7ac026e06b04208714c33017b3c77068a14bbb8ee32757/HP-1.jpg" /> We choose and sacralise objects in order to review our eternity in them. In 1919, a new invention by 23-year-old Lev Sergeyevich Termen began to make a strange sound (1). As a result of a fault in the device he was developing, the theremin emerged as the first synthesiser in the history of electronic music, forever changing its course and the understanding of the musical instrument as an object reactive to the human magnetic field. Years later, around 1965, a young Tony Iommi lost the tips of two of his fingers in a work accident in a metal factory, precisely on what would be his last day at the job before surrendering to his musical practice. A moment of resistance in the face of the obvious adversity he faced — as well as a reluctant listening to Django Reinhardt's (2) latest album — encouraged him to create a prosthesis that would extend his stolen extremities. Determined to play his Gibson with an iron tip in place of the void, he developed what would become the unprecedented and characteristic sound of heavy metal (3) — a dense, sonic and predestined riff. In the coming century, in 2001, a group of Russian teenagers would select seven melodies to be transmitted by radio waves into deep space (4) in a loop. Due to its electromagnetic quality and its ability to generate micro-tunes at a continuous frequency, the theremin was the chosen instrument to play this fifteen-minute concert, believed to have the greatest affinity with any probability of life outside Earth. One of the tracks chosen was Gershwin's famous 1935 composition, Summertime — the tune with the most versions recorded in its documentary archive (5). HEAVY METAL is an exhibition about a seismic cluster of phenomenological improbabilities. Giving sound to an interstellar journey in the exhibition space and summoning divine and ancestral symbols, Henrique Pavão (Lisbon, 1991) reflects on how the defects and failures that condition the intimate narratives of beings are transformed into omnipresent decipherments in a historical continuity, anachronistically intersecting in the same conceptual spectrum. By destroying and reorganising a cosmology of dissimilar references in the face of the consequence of randomness, the artist composes an ode to impermanence — where the mystique of sound, metallurgy and celestial objects are allied in a mantra to the entropic qualities of transformation. The key element and aggregator of all these energies is the duo of meteorites that solemnly levitates in the shimmering light within the installation. Originally coming from the ancient Gebel Kamil crater, they are part of a collection of meteoric iron remains that has been scattered but surprisingly well preserved since it fell in Egypt more than five thousand years ago. Taking as his raw material the celestial sacredness attributed to these objects — which mythology, in fact, called star metal — Pavão collects them and returns them to the mystery of their origin, giving them a voice that paradoxically communicates to the void an eternal call between life and death — inside was the universe, may he protect you (6). We recognise the song that lulls them. We even recognise that it is Gershwin's original arrangement for his mythical opera, Porgy and Bess (1935), in which a mother sings her child to sleep on her lap, in a tenderness that is both tragic and melancholic, and which is presented here with the longing of a whale's song. We sense the distancing and pressing crescendo of a spectral cry, which momentarily escapes from space only to persistently return. The result of a process sculptured by the artist in the image of the accident that gave rise to the term Heavy Metal, the sound is played by an instrumentalist (Ângela Flores Baltazar) on a theremin whose magnetic waves are activated, not only by her hands, but mostly by the magnetic quality of the heavy (7) and distinct iron meteorites that musician held while playing. The extension of this body, in fact replaced by an object foreign to the viability of the performance — as in Iommi's case (8) — thus gives the work a strange and painful struggle regarding the dominance of the instrument which, being electromagnetised, removes from the very meteorites that give it voice all its magnetic charge — the only living proof, now gone, of its identity and provenance — imprisoning them in an encounter of mutual annulment and strangely relating their painful echo to the very fine soprano of the original opera. Enclosed in boxes used to transport other musical equipment by air for concerts, modified here to make way for showcases, the meteorites await their journey as the monolithic instruments of this symphony of unveiling and prayer. Ghosts of their own origin and artefacts of their condition, they slowly await a path that can never begin, which is excellently summed up in the repetition of hearing the embezzlement that, in order to call them to life, erased them — it seems to make sense now, as one critic described the sound of a theremin as a cello lost in a dense fog, crying because it doesn't know how to get home (9). The sound, also looped, of the main melody, is frontally directed at them by a stage monitor whose factual purpose is to give the musicians back the sound they emanate live, once again reiterating the formal circularity of the organism and the purpose of cosmic destruction/devolution present in the exhibition — reinforcing a kind of funeral eulogy in perpetual movement. One line of proverb — one verse of folk songHalf a child’s lullaby — one page of ancient poetry.(10) Spectators of their own destruction, the meteorites are haunted by a final presence — the image of a frog that gazes absently over them throughout the rehearsal. Permeated with a resinous essence and uncovered by a torch that outlines its elusive contours within the confines of the same wood that often supports the necks of electric guitars, it recalls an old biblical parable from the Old Testament — Exodus 8:2 — often known as the plague of the rain of frogs11. This first conception — presented as an omen of punishment and therefore reverberating a divine intervention in the convalescence of evil — is rebelled against by its Egyptian meaning, naturally summoned by the impact crater, we know, of the celestial objects themselves, in a kind of mystical solidarity with Heaven (12). Symbolising feelings of goodness, abundance, fertility and forgiveness, it would often be an image of company to a body on its journey after death — here suggesting a kind of vital continuity, or perhaps even a promise of resurrection. To the meteorites that encase it, godspeed. Eva Mendes, 2024 (1) &nbsp;Weiner, Sophie in Russian Espionage and Electromagnetic Fields: The Story of the Theremin, 2017 (2) &nbsp;Jean "Django" Reinhardt was a Romanian-French guitarist whose fourth and fifth fingers were damaged by a violent burn. (3) &nbsp;Initially used to characterise the sound of Black Sabbath's first album in 1970, on which Tony Iommi was lead guitarist. (4) &nbsp;The mission is known as "Teen Age Message" and refers to the artist's dedication to his nephew Joaquim. (5) &nbsp;To date, more than 25,000 versions of this song have been recorded. (6) &nbsp;Chandaka, verses from Two Cosmologies, 6th century B.C. Translated by W.S. Merwin and J. Moussaieff Masson. (7) &nbsp;The meteorite on the right hand weighs 341.27 grams and the one on the left 276.07 grams. (8) Tony Iommi also doesn't feel the strings he plays on his prosthetic fingers.(9) Comment on the YouTube video where Lev Termen "plays his own instrument." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5qf9O6c20o (10) Inrasara, verses of Allegory of the Land. In The penguin book of spiritual verse, Penguin Classics, 2023.(11) The very title of the photograph, "It's not going to stop", refers to the frog rain sequence in Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia (1999).(12) Eliade, Mircea in Ferreiros e Alquimistas, Zahar Editores, 1977. Heavy Metal, 2024Installation views, 'Heavy Metal', Bruno Múrias Gallery, 2024 Photo — Bruno Lopes Video Documentation:&nbsp; https://vimeo.com/1087988600 Heavy Metal, 2024 Iron meteorite Gebel Kamil (provenance: Al Wadi al Jadid, Egypt, 2009 (276,07gr) - IMCA#2093 – GMA #0052, iron meteorite Gebel Kamil (provenance: Al Wadi al Jadid, Egypt, 2009 (341,27gr) – IMCA #2093 – GMA #0052,(2x) Flyht Pro Rack 20U Slide Shock (modified), (2x) magnet plates, stage monitor 800W, sound (“Summertime” by George Gershwin played on Theremin with iron meteorites (one for each hand), continuous loop)Variable dimensionsThereminist: Ângela Flores BaltazarMix: Henrique Pavão &amp; BenjamimRecorded at: studio louva-a-deus, Lisboa (with Benjamim) Flyht Pro Racks modification: ArtWorks It’s Not Going to Stop, 2024Silver gelatin print on paper, rosewood 76,2 x 51,2 cm https://henriquepavao.com/Waiting-Around-to-Die Mon, 12 Feb 2024 14:07:40 +0000 Henrique Pavão https://henriquepavao.com/Waiting-Around-to-Die <img width="7677" height="5120" width_o="7677" height_o="5120" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/422ce91c99d18f9974bc60804ff2660b6a09c3937fff542b5b5e5a823d99c8d3/Henrique-Pavao-1.jpg" data-mid="204451244" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/422ce91c99d18f9974bc60804ff2660b6a09c3937fff542b5b5e5a823d99c8d3/Henrique-Pavao-1.jpg" /> <img width="7677" height="5121" width_o="7677" height_o="5121" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4cbc28242e072c50ce626cdb4051fbfb62bc37cda5929ef76a8c4b452c28fd9f/Henrique-Pavao-3.jpg" data-mid="204451246" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4cbc28242e072c50ce626cdb4051fbfb62bc37cda5929ef76a8c4b452c28fd9f/Henrique-Pavao-3.jpg" /> <img width="7677" height="5121" width_o="7677" height_o="5121" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/eeea559601614438b9c4534562cce984ee49db1df4c09b96ac9829ddd9e14dfb/Henrique-Pavao-4.jpg" data-mid="204451247" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/eeea559601614438b9c4534562cce984ee49db1df4c09b96ac9829ddd9e14dfb/Henrique-Pavao-4.jpg" /> “Waiting Around to Die” is the title of this exhibition, which was conceived and created specifically for this space.To wander around, left to our fate, waiting to die, or else killing time until the final moment arrives. We “kill time” as we destroy ourselves and wait for death, a plight that is conveyed to us through the voice of Townes Van Zandt in “Waiting Around to Die” (1968), a favourite song of Henrique Pavão, who took from it the title of his exhibition. The artist is about to lose something. In a sound installation akin to land art, Henrique Pavão prepares for a change. A film is being shot, photographs are being taken and a sound is heard: a D minor chord that is played on an electric guitar by the weather, by nature and by chance. Out of this project, which is currently being developed in the sort of Portuguese landscape that, in the minds of some, is evocative of the Western film genre, the present exhibition at the Casa A. Molder Gallery emerges. Here we have an encounter, a discovery and a deception. During one of his perambulations through the Alentejo landscape (a scenery with which he is familiar), Henrique Pavão found a cow skull. The remains of an animal that almost surely died of thirst. Pavão’s strolls do not take place across miles and miles of prairie or desert; however, in this small stretch of land, sometimes we find ourselves as much under the sway of nature’s impetuosity as in certain vast expanses somewhere else on the globe. Yet, that is not the case. We are only under the sway of the indifference and impotence of those who take care (or neglect to take care) of these lands.The skull is no longer bone; now it is bronze, and the sign for the D minor chord that is part of Pavão’s other project has been etched into it. In western music (and elsewhere), this chord conveys sadness and anxiety. As previously stated, the artist is preparing to lose something and, by doing so, he creates his work. Equally “waiting around to die” is the exhibition’s space, the Casa A. Molder Gallery. Both Henrique Pavão and the space that hosts these bronze pieces (a cow skull and a long cable that would connect an electric guitar to an amplifier) carry loss in themselves. Here we have the encounter. Pavão has placed his bronze pieces (which slowly oxidate, having been purposely left untreated against that process) in a space that is both desert and oasis. What do we do while waiting around to die? The singer tells us of the sad path of someone who has always been neglected and eventually becomes an addict, which is always a way of waiting around to die. But the artist does not wait. The artist fights death through making, creating and finding: out of this struggle, the sculptures emerge. Henrique Pavão does not want to lose something, but loss is unavoidable, and is “crystallised” in this space lost in time, a hollow that reminds us of something that not so long ago was a part of our collective vision of a city, and is now slipping away from existence. It is here, in this place of absolute loss, that we will find Henrique Pavão’s sculptures, and here we will, attentive and committed, wait around to die. Adriana Molder, 2024 Wainting Around to Die, 2024 Bronze, instrument cable (6mm x 100m) Variable dimensions Installation views, 'Waiting Around to Die', Galeria da Casa A.Molder, 2024&nbsp;Photo — Bruno Lopes&nbsp; https://henriquepavao.com/The-Ultimate-Romance Tue, 21 Nov 2023 11:10:42 +0000 Henrique Pavão https://henriquepavao.com/The-Ultimate-Romance <img width="6569" height="4379" width_o="6569" height_o="4379" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/dacdabd482a3cd1f40ff1c4fe1c8a314973e3d38e81fa92d63c2955b6813c08a/THEULTIMATEROMANCE_CENTROBOTIN_01.jpg" data-mid="204451550" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/dacdabd482a3cd1f40ff1c4fe1c8a314973e3d38e81fa92d63c2955b6813c08a/THEULTIMATEROMANCE_CENTROBOTIN_01.jpg" /> <img width="6309" height="4206" width_o="6309" height_o="4206" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d69b1d82d3af297fd122acba6743836d583e89415ceb86be2b62ae2a9117b97b/THEULTIMATEROMANCE_CENTROBOTIN_02.jpg" data-mid="204451782" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d69b1d82d3af297fd122acba6743836d583e89415ceb86be2b62ae2a9117b97b/THEULTIMATEROMANCE_CENTROBOTIN_02.jpg" /> <img width="4297" height="6445" width_o="4297" height_o="6445" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/00921946af6b95a4f3e0d27731c3a9ed5f7c1d4a5ea82f961d851ef1a33c4148/THEULTIMATEROMANCE_CENTROBOTIN_04.jpg" data-mid="204451552" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/00921946af6b95a4f3e0d27731c3a9ed5f7c1d4a5ea82f961d851ef1a33c4148/THEULTIMATEROMANCE_CENTROBOTIN_04.jpg" /> <img width="6171" height="4114" width_o="6171" height_o="4114" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/035e4c68d13fe79a3fbf483fb884fb4235521a030a662ff5e198acfb9adea4f8/THEULTIMATEROMANCE_CENTROBOTIN_03.jpg" data-mid="204451700" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/035e4c68d13fe79a3fbf483fb884fb4235521a030a662ff5e198acfb9adea4f8/THEULTIMATEROMANCE_CENTROBOTIN_03.jpg" /> &nbsp; The Ultimate Romance is an installation composed by an HD video (color, sound, 4’29’’, loop) a bronze sculpture and a vitrine. The work stems from a failed attempt to reproduce an ancient artifact, questioning the idea of circular time and the notions of failure and loss. In the video, we see the Egyptian sculpture Head of Pharaoh Senworset III (c. 1860 BC), made of obsidian stone, part of the collection of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. Filmed in the context of its museum space, while being scanned by a laser beam—in a gesture that seeks to copy the original without ever succeeding—the piece rotates on itself, enveloped in a continuous and hypnotic movement. From this impossibility arises the sculptural element: the image captured by the scanner is printed in 3D and later cast in bronze, assuming the form of a ruin and testimony to a process doomed to incompleteness (1). The inability of technology to record reflective surfaces, such as obsidian, becomes a metaphor here, between what is visible and what remains hidden, recalling the ancestral and divinatory properties of this volcanic rock. The video is accompanied by a soundtrack, a faithful rendition of the song Planet Caravan (1970) by British band Black Sabbath, performed by tribute band Venïce Cathouse in collaboration with the artist (2). The ballad, with its romantic and meditative reverberations, echoes a timeless cosmic journey, with no end and no beginning. In The Ultimate Romance, the artist brings the sculptural gesture closer to the musical gesture: both operate through repetition and difference, through trial and error. If the reinterpretation of a song allows appropriation to make anachronism a continuous present, the artifact resists, rendering obsolete the technology that seeks to prolong it into the future. The past and the present overlap in a continuous movement where the original and the copy, sound and matter, become indistinct: everything is part of the same orbit. (1) The sculpture is displayed in a Rothstein’s vitrine, a replica of the ones existing at the Egyptian wing of the Gulbenkian Museum, evidencing and even emphasizing the idea of failure and ruin. (2) The soundtrack was recorded on a professional sound studio through a Neve 8078 console, and the gear used was the same as that used by Black Sabbath in the 1970s. An example of this is the Leslie speaker applied in the vocal track. The Ultimate Romance, 2023 HD video (colour, sound, 4’29’’,loop), bronze, vitrine Variable dimensions Installation views, 'Itinerarios XXVIII', Centro Botín, Santander, 2023 Fundación Botín Photo Archive Photo — Vicente Paredes&nbsp; Soundtrack:Planet Caravan (1970) – Black Sabbath covered by Venïce CathouseVenïce Cathouse are:Mário França: voice-guitar solo Jonathan Bogard: bassHugo Cazanova: rhythm guitar / pianoOther instruments:Henrique Pavão: percussionBenjamim: keyboardsMix &amp; Master: Benjamim Produced by Henrique Pavão &amp; Benjamim Recorded at Namouche Studios, Lisboa, 2023 With the support of: ArtWorks (Oporto, Portugal), The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Museum (Lisboa, Portugal), Fundación Botín (Santander, Spain) https://henriquepavao.com/Moonshine Fri, 02 Jun 2023 11:05:50 +0000 Henrique Pavão https://henriquepavao.com/Moonshine <img width="8280" height="6208" width_o="8280" height_o="6208" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e9f1c30d4bf14f4d077d2db9d829eb8fd811873f100eb7f9a6a7aecf732d7c90/monnshine_1.jpg" data-mid="197492293" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e9f1c30d4bf14f4d077d2db9d829eb8fd811873f100eb7f9a6a7aecf732d7c90/monnshine_1.jpg" /> <img width="8280" height="6208" width_o="8280" height_o="6208" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/26e9b4a8a11cbad661d46db76a0f8e54aad5f4dd3dba93d965c638ff00df3d29/Monnshine_2.jpg" data-mid="197490263" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/26e9b4a8a11cbad661d46db76a0f8e54aad5f4dd3dba93d965c638ff00df3d29/Monnshine_2.jpg" /> “In a present defined by images films can be said to act as memory machines that construct and sustain collective remembrances. The scenes and plots of movies have become entwined with the recall of our own past, capturing us in a limbo-like suspension of nostalgia ‘neither fully immersed in memory nor living in the present.’&nbsp; Silver is a residue of the film industry process and is integral to the production of black and white film in particular, without which none of these moving image stories would exist; it is recycled by spinning a solution containing traces of the substance in industrial drums, leaving behind a remnant of precious metal. The shattered ore fragments were collected by Pavão from the laboratories of the Portuguese Cinema Museum&nbsp; and formed into a sculpture that retains the circular shape of the extraction drum.&nbsp; His act of bringing back the spent silver residue evokes the countless reels that contributed to the history of Portuguese film, and, by association, all of cinema. His gesture gives material shape to a memory lived out on the silver screen, the fugitive recall of a vicarious life that embeds us all in a dreaming collective.” Nicolas de Oliveira &amp; Nicola Oxley, 2023 Moonshine, 2023 Silver extrated from 35 mm films 20 x 20 x 10 cm Installation views, 'Oxímoro / Oxymoron', Kindred Spirit, 2022 Photo — João Grama&nbsp; https://henriquepavao.com/The-World-Beneath-The-City Fri, 02 Jun 2023 10:53:09 +0000 Henrique Pavão https://henriquepavao.com/The-World-Beneath-The-City <img width="5120" height="2880" width_o="5120" height_o="2880" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d024c97004fa8fed60904b5f427d4edc2d6de8fb9f0bbd32c6314dff174b134a/18.jpg" data-mid="180782621" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d024c97004fa8fed60904b5f427d4edc2d6de8fb9f0bbd32c6314dff174b134a/18.jpg" /> <img width="5120" height="2880" width_o="5120" height_o="2880" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4652af1293ec9d12460fe01feda42375fd333ff1ff65e76a26c52a4bb0b259aa/19.jpg" data-mid="180782552" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4652af1293ec9d12460fe01feda42375fd333ff1ff65e76a26c52a4bb0b259aa/19.jpg" /> <img width="5120" height="2880" width_o="5120" height_o="2880" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/31135e7c8df65526c62fa2640ec6084c33ec6af5880852f08a8e0c6437f1b0d3/31.jpg" data-mid="180782623" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/31135e7c8df65526c62fa2640ec6084c33ec6af5880852f08a8e0c6437f1b0d3/31.jpg" /> <img width="5120" height="2880" width_o="5120" height_o="2880" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b955e18b01122c0db2204ad5be5037207d2a774d47b79a62695ef2bb41afc041/1.jpg" data-mid="180782629" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b955e18b01122c0db2204ad5be5037207d2a774d47b79a62695ef2bb41afc041/1.jpg" /> <img width="5120" height="2880" width_o="5120" height_o="2880" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c2a5def78aa954261aa4812fa713893d4e505f1e49e70e136f0ed81ec309b9c7/2.jpg" data-mid="180782901" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c2a5def78aa954261aa4812fa713893d4e505f1e49e70e136f0ed81ec309b9c7/2.jpg" /> <img width="5120" height="2880" width_o="5120" height_o="2880" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3dfbadf59033a8584e9a4e0a7987022b384fe4a529375dd99c1f561cd06e57b7/8.jpg" data-mid="180782622" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3dfbadf59033a8584e9a4e0a7987022b384fe4a529375dd99c1f561cd06e57b7/8.jpg" /> “Pavão adopts the title of the 1959 book by writer Robert Daley, which explores the myth of crocodiles existing in the city's sewer system ​(1) and delineates an oeuvre that discusses fictional situations through the use of real images. The myth suggests that the specific conditions of the sewers, characterized by the absence of light, foul water, junk food, and other remnants of the city, allowed these creatures to grow larger and change the color of their skin. The facts and fables pointing to the existence of giant albino (2) crocodiles permeated popular culture, making it a recurring theme in the press, books, comic book series, as well as television programs and the film industry. However, one could argue that everything underlying this web of hypothetical events reveals a fear of losing control and dominion over the environment. In this work, Pavão juxtaposes sounds and images that interpolate, contradict, and complement each other, layer by layer, promising the possibility of a narrative without actually providing a straightforward account. What we ear originates from the sampling of a song, Trojan Blue by the band Icehouse, leading us to the sound of brakes on New York City subway trains. The resulting composition acquires a hypnotic quality that permeates different moments and aggregates the images we observe. What we see is marked by a convergence of distinct historical and geographical relationships, where the enigmatic figure of the crocodile is delineated from different origins - including its veneration in ancient Egypt (as evidenced by the figures depicted in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art); through the travelling gaze of the artist's shot of a live albino crocodile (filmed in the Florida area); or by images displaying these creatures in their natural habitat. Other recordings show us how these animals are tamed by humans in a strange and immersive convergence, such as the iconic image of a cowboy holding the animal by its own head and then closing on its gaze. Additionally, there are sequences that establish the density of urban culture, marked by the fervor of construction, the expression of its infrastructures, and the presence of heavy industry, once again asserting a position of control or supremacy through force. All considered, if on one hand we have the striking figure of a hypnotic animal (3) that, in between danger and curiosity stands out by its dimension, antiquity, and appearance, and despite being part of an assortment of legends, still exists as a living albino being; On the other hand, we have the mark of the human species, affirmed in an imbalanced relationship with the environment, where the paradigm of extraction, overlap, and dominance, bests a collaborative logic of respect for the integrity of other beings and the planet itself. In truth, at the intersection of all these different aspects, the work emanates a mixture of enchantment and disillusionment with a society that history romanticized, and was presented as a utopian new world, but today reveals itself in decline with the logic of the financial system and the importance of capital in governing the nature of all relationships.” Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues, 2023 (1) The first records corroborating this belief emerged in the early 1930s through campaigns by the New York Police aimed at exterminating these animals. However, it was only later, in the 1950s, that the myth gained widespread expression. Based on reports of several families who kept newly hatched crocodiles in their homes and the danger posed by their growth, many of these animals were dumped into the sewers, perpetuating a set of fears that moved out of sight. (2) Albinism is characterized by the dilution of skin color and is based on a genetic alteration that reduces an enzyme involved in melanin production. Its origin is not related to a lack of sunlight exposure, as the mentioned myth proposes, nor is it a sacred condition as it has sometimes been suggested throughout history, where albino individuals have been given names such as "sun grandchildren" or "moon children." In fact, over time, albinism has alternated between receiving particular attention and being stigmatized, simultaneously highlighting and isolating the individual. Albinism is also present in the animal kingdom, where animals with similar altered pigmentations can be found. (3) Symbolically, throughout centuries, the crocodile has been seen as an animal that inhabits the space between two worlds. It is simultaneously ancient and contemporary, dangerous and enchanting, wild and tamed. It’s a being that exists within a state of transition, both below and above the water, on the threshold between the subconscious and reality. The World Beneath The City, 2023 HD video (colour, sound, continuous loop)&nbsp; Variable dimensions Soundtrack - Henrique Pavão &amp; João Pimenta Gomes Sound Mix &amp; Master - Pedro Abecasis