Variation 72. linking planes, from the series The Divergent Image © Fernando Marante
Artist statement
Let’s assume that multiple devices operate within the same image vocabulary. As in language, the images they generate are the consequence of a combination of “words” that are “made, remade and unmade” (Deleuze, Difference and Repetition).
They display sentences and variations, points of arrival that evolve into points of departure for new configurations. The repetition of some behaviors allows us to suspect a discourse is being produced.
This visual universe is built on physical phenomena. The here and now is always present. The dictatorship of the visible never fails to determine the result. However, these photographs however flirt with abstraction, they are ambivalent about the world and, as the thread that connects them to it gets thinner, the decisions made during the process become clearer.
What is this that we see? Is it the trail creased by dozens of planes in the Lisbon sky (before the lockdown) or is it a diagram? The space of the sky and the self-canceled space of a black background in a photograph are as much the same as they are different. The lines that cross each are an accumulation of successive points.
The pace of these points on their journey could determine a different image and, hence, the image tells us about coordinates, presence and absence.
A gap remains hidden between one photograph and the next. This gap is a between-time of supposition and speculation, of an emptiness crammed with in- exhaustible not-here/not-now’s, accumulated in vertical stacks, expanding in all directions like the universe, suggesting hypothetical presences of images that did not happen.
Bio
Fernando Marante (Matosinhos, Portugal, 1973), lives and works in Lisbon and is a visual artist whose experimental work explores the representational attribute of photography. All his images are generated with devices built by the artist, often using electrical engines, that induce movement on common objects. He’s represented by Módulo Gallery in Lisbon, which showed his second individual exhibition in 2019. That same year, he was one of the winners of Paris Photo Carte Blanche Étudiants. He is in the official selection of Boutographies Festival 2021, in Montpellier, and was shortlisted for this year’s Prix Mentor #Arles.
He shows his work in collective and individual exhibitions in art biennials, art fairs, and museums in Portugal. He won the Leonor and António Parreira and Fundação Victor e Graça Carmona e Costa scholarships while attending Ar.Co Art School in Lisbon.
Variation 79. Rearrangement, from the series The Divergent Image © Fernando Marante
Variation 49. Plane against plane, from the series The Divergent Image © Fernando Marante
Variation 25. Statics and Dynamics (after Paul Klee), from the series The Divergent Image © Fernando Marante
Variation 74. The act of forming, from the series The Divergent Image © Fernando Marante
Variation 15. Descending ten, from the series The Divergent Image © Fernando Marante
Variation 86. Movement and countermovement (after Paul Klee) from the series The Divergent Image © Fernando Marante
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