Centre culturel portugais Camoes
4, place Joseph Thorn, Luxembourg-Merl
Finissage de l'exposition en présence de l'artiste
Accueil par Adilia Martins de Carvalho, directrice du Centre Camoes, ensuite visite guidée en portugais par l'artiste, avec traduction simultanée en français.
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
Bärbel Aubert accueillera les Amis des Musées pour cette visite.
IMPORTANT : Pour les visites proposées par les Amis des Musées, une inscription au préalable est obligatoire. Vous recevrez une confirmation avant la visite.
Pour cette visite nous vous prions de respecter les consignes de sécurité : port du masque, désinfection des mains et respect d'une distance d'au moins 1,5 m entre les participants du groupe.