All Animals are Bad,
all of them are a Meal
away from Barbarity
On the Brevity of Life: Tension in a Poetic Act
For these brief notes on the work of Filipe Marques, I revisited images from these two exhibitions, annotations of his journey, texts, and references that the artist collects in a cumulative manner. I began, almost as if for the first time, a movement of seeing, re-seeing, re-reading, searching, and allowing myself to get lost within the incomplete sequence of his opus universalis, the direction his visual and plastic work is heading toward.
Means of production, elements, materials, and diverse substances contribute to an operatic work that seems to pursue an idea of how, as an artist, one might face a total work with an auto-referential and biographical matrix, which assumes the form of a trilogy, marked by differentiated spaces of presentation and a unique timeline. In an interview with Eduarda Neves, the questions of time and memory are clearly present in a dialogic correspondence with words, whether as captions for the films he develops or through the polysemy of meaning within the body of images that succeed one another in the voracity of the entire visual montage his work constitutes. From my perspective, these two elements are the structural skeleton of his work — between logos and becoming, between dramatic poetry, salvaged from philosophy through Maria Filomena Molder, and the most elemental synthesis, which, in the author’s words, might “express all the complexity of humanity in such a simple formula that it can be perceived in an exhibition, literally, without Work.”
Filipe Marques operates within a lineage of artists who question the limits of power and the value that each image expresses in its representation, whether as an artistic or poetic object, or in the reality of the fragility and contingency of everyday life. From my viewpoint, his work navigates a winding and compulsive dialectic between, on one hand, an existentialist tension and, on the other, an apparent nihilistic state that he persists in fighting against. The presence of fear, which could not be more evident, as it is the title of an exhibition that gives form to the creation of this trilogy: Are we all museums of fear, as well as the corresponding presence of evil, place the figure of Hannah Arendt within these lines, reflecting on recent history and "the banality of evil”, which demands a reflection on the meaning of life and generates a field of critical possibilities that Marques continues to map. I now quote a passage from a book by Susan Neiman, in a chapter on Nietzsche and tragedy, which seems to resonate with Filipe Marques’ reflections and questioning: “If tragedy affirms life, it serves as a model like nothing else. Nietzsche said it gives metaphysical comfort. Only art can transform horror into something sublime. And it does so by refusing to acknowledge that. Tragedy gives a form rather than a meaning. The tragic worldview, in decline after Socrates, introduced the idea that beauty and intelligibility go hand in hand.”
The second exhibition of this announced trilogy, titled ALL ANIMALS ARE BAD, ALL OF THEM ARE A MEAL AWAY FROM BARBARITY, presents us with an ambiguous game, perhaps within the duality between represented tragedy and the possible and imagined allegories of the artist within the exhibition space. The works are constructed on a scale and dimension that challenge the viewer's presence, confronting them with images that blur the line between drawing and photography, for example, modulated by a panning effect that gives them an apparent movement. These photographic images, framed in metal, emphasise their presence in the space, composed of overlays and brief texts that reference a practice linked to conceptual art and the idea of cinematic projection. This presence of cinema is evident in the video, which occupies a very particular room within the gallery’s architectural structure. It is a work that unfolds in space, given that the projection does not coincide with its soundtrack, which expands into other spaces of the exhibition. Filipe Marques plays with perception and the movement of the viewer in the exhibition space, reconfiguring visual language, the installation in space, and the images in the works that represent classical busts with hollowed eyes, printed on paper or virtuously drawn onto this very same medium. This subtlety, which may not be immediately grasped at first glance of the exhibition, manifests a physicality and an arrangement of the artist’s gesture and body that seems to defy the scale and almost industrial, monumental construction of his works. I also highlight a set of vertical works, framed on wood and untitled, presenting large fragments of oil-painted paper with words and phrases in English, communicating the tension of pain, life that blurs with barbarity, and that animality which Marques rescues at the very edge of the humanity we long for.
Filipe Marques' work unfolds as a process of montage and editing, in a cinematic construction between collage and assemblage, moving image, the need for the fragment, and the scenography of the exhibition space. All this contributes to an idea that emerged to me upon viewing his work — of a permanent tension throughout the poetic act that is his creation. Thus, in this cumulative plenitude, an inquiry “on the shortness of life”, as Seneca tells us: “All spirits that ever shone will agree on this single point: they will never cease to be amazed at the blindness of the human mind. It is not borne that properties are invaded by anyone, and if there is the slightest discord about the measure of their limits, men resort to stones and weapons; yet, they allow others to intrude on their lives to the point of inducing their future possessors; there is no one who wishes to divide their money, but life — among how many each one distributes it! They are stingy in preserving their property, while, when it comes to wasting time, they are very prodigal with regard to the only thing in which stinginess is justified”.
João Silvério
All Animals are Bad,
all of them are a Meal
away from Barbarity
On the Brevity of Life: Tension in a Poetic Act
For these brief notes on the work of Filipe Marques, I revisited images from these two exhibitions, annotations of his journey, texts, and references that the artist collects in a cumulative manner. I began, almost as if for the first time, a movement of seeing, re-seeing, re-reading, searching, and allowing myself to get lost within the incomplete sequence of his opus universalis, the direction his visual and plastic work is heading toward.
Means of production, elements, materials, and diverse substances contribute to an operatic work that seems to pursue an idea of how, as an artist, one might face a total work with an auto-referential and biographical matrix, which assumes the form of a trilogy, marked by differentiated spaces of presentation and a unique timeline. In an interview with Eduarda Neves, the questions of time and memory are clearly present in a dialogic correspondence with words, whether as captions for the films he develops or through the polysemy of meaning within the body of images that succeed one another in the voracity of the entire visual montage his work constitutes. From my perspective, these two elements are the structural skeleton of his work — between logos and becoming, between dramatic poetry, salvaged from philosophy through Maria Filomena Molder, and the most elemental synthesis, which, in the author’s words, might “express all the complexity of humanity in such a simple formula that it can be perceived in an exhibition, literally, without Work.”
Filipe Marques operates within a lineage of artists who question the limits of power and the value that each image expresses in its representation, whether as an artistic or poetic object, or in the reality of the fragility and contingency of everyday life. From my viewpoint, his work navigates a winding and compulsive dialectic between, on one hand, an existentialist tension and, on the other, an apparent nihilistic state that he persists in fighting against. The presence of fear, which could not be more evident, as it is the title of an exhibition that gives form to the creation of this trilogy: Are we all museums of fear, as well as the corresponding presence of evil, place the figure of Hannah Arendt within these lines, reflecting on recent history and "the banality of evil”, which demands a reflection on the meaning of life and generates a field of critical possibilities that Marques continues to map. I now quote a passage from a book by Susan Neiman, in a chapter on Nietzsche and tragedy, which seems to resonate with Filipe Marques’ reflections and questioning: “If tragedy affirms life, it serves as a model like nothing else. Nietzsche said it gives metaphysical comfort. Only art can transform horror into something sublime. And it does so by refusing to acknowledge that. Tragedy gives a form rather than a meaning. The tragic worldview, in decline after Socrates, introduced the idea that beauty and intelligibility go hand in hand.”
The second exhibition of this announced trilogy, titled ALL ANIMALS ARE BAD, ALL OF THEM ARE A MEAL AWAY FROM BARBARITY, presents us with an ambiguous game, perhaps within the duality between represented tragedy and the possible and imagined allegories of the artist within the exhibition space. The works are constructed on a scale and dimension that challenge the viewer's presence, confronting them with images that blur the line between drawing and photography, for example, modulated by a panning effect that gives them an apparent movement. These photographic images, framed in metal, emphasise their presence in the space, composed of overlays and brief texts that reference a practice linked to conceptual art and the idea of cinematic projection. This presence of cinema is evident in the video, which occupies a very particular room within the gallery’s architectural structure. It is a work that unfolds in space, given that the projection does not coincide with its soundtrack, which expands into other spaces of the exhibition. Filipe Marques plays with perception and the movement of the viewer in the exhibition space, reconfiguring visual language, the installation in space, and the images in the works that represent classical busts with hollowed eyes, printed on paper or virtuously drawn onto this very same medium. This subtlety, which may not be immediately grasped at first glance of the exhibition, manifests a physicality and an arrangement of the artist’s gesture and body that seems to defy the scale and almost industrial, monumental construction of his works. I also highlight a set of vertical works, framed on wood and untitled, presenting large fragments of oil-painted paper with words and phrases in English, communicating the tension of pain, life that blurs with barbarity, and that animality which Marques rescues at the very edge of the humanity we long for.
Filipe Marques' work unfolds as a process of montage and editing, in a cinematic construction between collage and assemblage, moving image, the need for the fragment, and the scenography of the exhibition space. All this contributes to an idea that emerged to me upon viewing his work — of a permanent tension throughout the poetic act that is his creation. Thus, in this cumulative plenitude, an inquiry “on the shortness of life”, as Seneca tells us: “All spirits that ever shone will agree on this single point: they will never cease to be amazed at the blindness of the human mind. It is not borne that properties are invaded by anyone, and if there is the slightest discord about the measure of their limits, men resort to stones and weapons; yet, they allow others to intrude on their lives to the point of inducing their future possessors; there is no one who wishes to divide their money, but life — among how many each one distributes it! They are stingy in preserving their property, while, when it comes to wasting time, they are very prodigal with regard to the only thing in which stinginess is justified”.
João Silvério
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