Centre culturel portugais Camoes
4, place Joseph Thorn, Luxembourg-Merl
Le finissage de l'exposition en présence de l'artiste aura lieu le jeudi 25.06.2020 à 18.30.
Les Amis des Musées visiteront l'exposition à 17.30.
Le Centre culturel portugais – Camões a réouvert ses portes au public le 11 mai et sera ouvert de lundi à vendredi, dans l’horaire habituel. La reprise de l’activité est accompagnée de mesures sanitaires obligatoires permettant d’assurer la sécurité du public : Le port du masque durant toute la visite du CCP- Camões et la désinfection des mains à l’entrée. L’accès simultané est autorisé en nombre limité à 20 personnes maximum, qui doivent respecter la distance interpersonnelle recommandée.
Suits of armour, carapaces, visors, joints: metal is now the subject Miguel Telles da Gama obsessively paints, the remains of wandering knights, that which is left of Alexander Nevsky’s makeshift tin cans, warlike black metal pieces that no longer protect winners or warrior saints; it has been long since last there was a Charles V for painters to portray in the thick of battle or in the peace of Breda.
Everything is now dead; these are terrible times, and dark too, rites of darkness and death.
And another night falls; everything is black, incomplete, fragmented: a bit of a neck, a knee, a shoulder, a joint, an elbow, a calf, amputations in this steel morgue.
There is no one inside these forgotten suits of armour, not even ghosts. Even Calvino failed to notice them, though there is no doubt that through here passed many cloven noblemen, mementoes of Roncesvalles, combats of Tancred and Clorinda. These suits of armour come out of painting and arrive in the dead of night, alone; their broken-down steps do not echo in the dark corridors of the Canterville, not by any means.
Telles da Gama cuts up these romantic, nocturnal, spectral, mute suits of armour; he approaches them in the fearful night, heedful of the folds of their bug-like carapaces: crustacean or warrior, everything here is black, hollow, empty, so lethal.
And suddenly, a white, reflected light, probably the day is breaking, or it is just the moonlight of the dead, just light and just white.
Yes, “lovely as the moonlight”, Gomes Leal wrote, “on a fish’s luminous and peculiar back”.
Luminous and peculiar.
Jorge Silva Melo
