Organized by the KF in collaboration with the Embassy of Portugal in Seoul, the "Portugal - Enchanted Loom" exhibition highlights the work of three Portuguese artists, Bela Silva, Bruno Castro Santos, and Jorge Nesbitt. Working extensively in drawing, the three artists have explored and experimented with a wide range of compositional techniques and subjects, establishing different styles and orders of painting. However, what unites their work is a reflection on aesthetic attitudes and traditions that actively fuse the traditional culture of their native Portugal with the visual culture of today.
Portuguese art and culture have blossomed over the past centuries, with a creative weaving of indigenous and exteral elements. This is recognized as a very important aspect of Portuguese art and a value to be passed on. The title of the exhibition, "The Enchanted Loom," borrows an important phrase from neuroscientist Charles S. Sherington's book Man on His Nature(1940). Sherrington likened certain moments in the human brain during sleep to the process of weaving a beautiful fabric, which is what the rhetoric of "The Enchanted Loom" refers to. Shemington's phrase reminds us of those magical moments when the weft of tradition and the warp of novelty are repeatedly intertwined to weave unique pattems and textures.
This exhibition brings together the work of three artists whose works capture the intersection between indigenous and extemal elements of Portuguese culture through the experience of magical moments. When the individual works of each artist are displayed together in a single space and form a unified exhibition, the viewer is invited to experience a moment of magic, a moment of ecstasy.
For Bela Silva, who combines ceramics with drawing, traveling to South America and Asia has been an important inspiration for her process of creating deformities in ceramics. The elements of other countries that she has absorbed through her travels are fused with her own Portuguese aesthetic, leading to new sculptural forms. Her drawings, which express the joy of life in an energetic way, are also characterized by her own expressive technique and contemporary sensibility.
Bruno Castro Santos's drawings are special, starting with the preparation process of choosing the paper. On a carefully selected surface, he establishes the overall structure of his works and applies his own rules. The results are experimental, a dialectical endeavor of drawing that leads to the establishment, variation, and redefinition of rules. Bruno's works, which require a performative attitude, build up line after line, layer after layer, offering a new sense of depth beyond the two-dimensional plane that is almost meditative in nature.
Jorge Nesbitt's large-scale works utilize a block printmaking technique called linocut. They have a special visual impact not only because of their subject matter, but also because of their application of classical printmaking techniques. Throughout his works, literary naratives and historical themes are closely linked, and in the process of expression, the forms and techniques of Asian art, which have always interested the artist, are applied.
Through the works of these three artists, each with their distinctive personality, we hope to convey and share with Korean audiences the special charm of Portuguese art and drawing.
