BARAFUNDA by Sebastião Cavaco
Lisboa, PT
16 Nov - 21 Dec 2018
In 2018, I curated my first exhibition alongside a great friend and artist - Sebastião Cavaco. Meeting continuously in his studio, we created Barafunda (translated from portuguese as “Mess”), an exhibition that gathered an homogenous group of work which included paintings on canvas, digital prints and installation.
Through an informal, yet intimate atmosphere, Sebastião invites the audience to engage with his studio - the location where he finds the perfect harmony to create his artworks, but also to display them for visitors. Together, we suggest a journey not only through his personal universe, but through a relation between chromatic experiences and sonority.
Barafunda comes as a reflection of a confuse and unconscious domain; of the needs to explore the canvas as a starting point to other supports, but with the same expression and principle - however, with the will to leave a statement beyond the common practices.
Borboletas (2018) | 33,5 x 22 cm | acrylic on canvas
Brincadeiras de Criança (2018) | 55 x 46,5 cm | acrylic on canvas // Barafunda (2018) | 100 x 80cm | acrylic on canvas
Evidenciando a Paisagem (2018) | 63 x 51cm | digital painting on forex // Radiante (2018) | 60 x 42cm | digital painting on forex
Terróceu (2018) | 180 x 15cm | mixed media on canvas
Installation View
Atrás não há nada (2018) | 174,5 x 123cm | acrylic on wood
Installation View
Installation View
70 x 50 cm | Digital painting on forex
70 x 50 cm | Digital painting on forex
While observing Sebastião’s creative process, I was reminded by Wassily Kandinky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1991). In this complex aesthetics publication, Kandinsky designates the “Interior Need” as a discovery in the modern artistic landscape. The exploration of this thematic was to me a starting point to have a closer look through this group of work. When it comes to painting, the “Interior Need” gathers three mystical needs, shortly constituting elements of personality, style and art. After elaborating the exhibition parcours, I was able to connect these elements with the artworks on their different supports.
The will that is empowered on making the works on digital formats is similar to the one that is applied on the canvas – the need of expression, form, colour, gesture. Nevertheless, they are customized and processed in a different way, thus the artist explores different techniques and supports that are exhilarated by the constant coexistence with technology during his lifetime. What mostly fascinates Sebastião in the digital format is the access to its manipulation, therefore all steps of creation are inevitably part of the work. The irreversible becomes relative, even more than in the canvas, and with that arise infinite solutions and multiple ways of creation.
The suspended installation – Atrás não há nada | There’s nothing behind, 2018 – evidences the relation with the element of personality, for its relation through the integration with space. There is a need to resort to a three-dimensional support in which the assimilation of the shades and forms is elevated to be appreciated from a different point of view. The ausience is obliged to become acquainted with the space that surrounds the installation to comprehend its existence. We are emerged in a small universe where the aesthetic mess where the artist inhabits is reflected.
Carolina Pelletier Fontes, November 2018
Sebastião Cavaco (1993) is a visual artist born and based in Lisbon. After briefly studying Architecture at Faculdade de Arquitectura de Lisboa, he studied Painting at Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa. He participated in several group shows and counts with solo shows in Lisbon, Castelo Branco and Faro. His practice embraces techniques such as drawing, painting, photography, video as well as other digital art supports.
All images are by Manuel Pinho Braga