João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva
Tem gwef tem gwef dr rr rr

Sep 10th – Oct 9th, 2011
Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf

Copyright Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf

Press release

João Ma­ria Gusmão and Pe­dro Pai­va (born 1979 and 1977) de­scri­be their work as a poe­ti­cal phi­lo­so­phi­cal fic­tion. A cen­tral sour­ce of in­spi­ra­ti­on for the Por­tu­gue­se ar­tist duo are the wri­tings of the

litt­le-known French aut­hor René Dau­mal (1908-1944) who be­mo­aned the loss of myths in mo­dern so­cie­ty and de­vo­ted him­s­elf to the li­mits of con­ven­tio­nal per­cep­ti­on and the ma­gic of things.

As Dau­mal de­scri­bed in his 1943 short sto­ry “The De­ter­mi­ning Me­mo­ry,” Tem gwef tem gwef dr rr rr was a sound him­s­elf ma­de du­ring one of his vi­si­ons of the here­af­ter. Li­ke

Dau­mal, who ne­ga­ted the bo­un­da­ries bet­ween the mys­te­rious and the ra­tio­nal in his wri­tings, know­ledge over­laps wi­th sur­re­al, un­ex­plainable ap­pa­ri­ti­ons in Gusmão’s and Pai­va’s films, pho­to­graphs and sculp­tu­res in which they ar­tis­ti­cal­ly vi­sua­li­se the in­com­pre­hen­si­ble and uni­ma­ginable.

In a kind of dream­scape set­ting de­ve­lo­ped es­pe­ci­al­ly for the ex­hi­bi­ti­on, the ar­tists show a se­ries of works that chal­len­ge re­a­son in par­ti­cu­lar wi­th fil­mic me­ans, op­ti­cal il­lu­si­ons and ob­scu­re ex­pe­ri­ments and deal wi­th the pro­blem of re­lia­bly il­lus­tra­ting rea­li­ty.

The ex­hi­bi­ti­on is ac­com­pa­nied by a Ger­man/English pu­bli­ca­ti­on wi­th nu­me­rous co­lour il­lus­tra­ti­ons and texts by Elo­die Evers, René Dau­mal and João Ma­ria Gusmão and Pe­dro Pai­va

About João Maria Gusmão

João Maria Gusmão (*1979) is known for practices and meta-practices ranging from experimental film to photography, sculpture, drawing, literature and curating.

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