Kevin Power
Rui Calçada Bastos also exploits astute readings
of the early conceptual artists. He talks of “revealing the City’s
intimate histories and continuous memory” and “the sensitivities
that become attached to spaces”. That is a large plateful since Berlin
is certainly a city that abounds with histories – some are intimate to
the story of the city itself and other to the individuals who live there -
but Calçada Bastos´ intention is to focus on particulars, to dig
them out by attention to detail. He avoids the large stories: Berlin of the
Second World War, Berlin of the Fall of the Wall, Berlin of the night life
of the neo expressionists, from Fetting, Salome etc running on down until it
ran out, Berlin with its Beuysian Academy, Berlin with the presence of Michael
Werner, Sigmar Polke, Jorg Immendorf, and Markus Lupertz, Berlin of the spy
films, of Lotte Lenya, of the Air Lift, of Willy Brandt, Berlin of May 68,
of cheap property, of artist studios, of immigrants. He tries to find more
what Cezanne called les petites sensations, the glimpses of things that suggest
the city’s sensitivity, its moods and rhythms, the soundscapes, the sense
of roaming the city, the accumulation of visual knowledge that finally allows
us to feel at ease, to somehow belong.
His work constantly plays with the mediums that he uses, with the forms of
representation and the meanings they inherently carry, between video and photography,
between video and drawing. A video for a photograph/A
photograph for a video (2006) shows in a Marcusian sense how the medium
carries the message, how these two contemporary forms of representing reality,
a mediated reality that is now as common in advanced technological societies
as direct contact itself with the “real”. Calçada Bastos
juxtaposes these representations and shows how our experience of the same image
is not the same. There are issues of time, of play on the optical nerves, of
size, of concentration that make the reception of the same image very different.
This is even more apparent in Self-Portrait while thinking (2007) where
he juxtaposes a series of charcoal drawings with a video projection. Without
suggesting any direct influence I think of Bruce Naumann´s emphasis on
the role of language in his re-evaluation of pictorial form and his use of
his own bodily presence as for example in
Eleven Color Photographs (1966-70) full of visual and linguistic double
entendres. And I also think more specifically of Bas Jan Ader´s I´m
too sad to tell you where he breaks down in tears and provides no guide
lines as to its meaning, apart from references to Bellini and van der Weyden
Calçada
Bastos makes it clear how the reception of these images according to the medium
used changes radically. The drawings are expressive, contain the emotions produced
by touch, they take us in to the person. He uses the same expressions and poses
as in the video but the video cools things down and the idea stands out as
more apparent. The communication is quicker and more direct, the humour and
play more evident. It is a work that carries numerous levels of meaning. It
holds our attention and entertains our mind.
Kevin Power in Itinerarios 06 – 07 Catalogue,
XV Becas de Artes Plásticas, 2008
