Intervals, 2013
Fabriano Paper, Black Ink, Fragments from natural remains incl. stones, branches, leaves, soil.50 x 100cm; 150 x 100cm; 70 x 50cm, 70 x 50cm
Intervals is a drawing series that explores performative and ritualistic gestures prompt by natural artefacts and the rhythms of the landscape.
The project started by collecting natural materials and artefacts and exploring primitive gestures of action/reaction, taken form raw materials instead of traditional drawing instruments or tools.
Breaking these limits for João meant an archeological tracing to it’s origins, in a pre-cultural world, where drawing was perhaps an instinctive rather than a learnt act, provoked by the environment in which it was made, more than by global currents of artistic expression.
These drawings reflect these performative gestures, and the textures and traces of these found materials, as well as the soundscapes created by the environment and responded with the gesture. Intervals reflect on the space between the gesture and the impulse, the space between the cultural and natural forms of expression, the rhythmic space between a sound and the other and between the dark traces of ink over the landscape of paper.
In this project João expands the ability to think and feel drawing as a gesture through contact, not only with a surface but with his surroundings.