Católica opens exhibition ‘Animistic Glass: multidimensional visions’

‘Animistic Glass: multidimensional visions’ is the new exhibition at the Fundação Amélia de Mello Gallery, which opened on May 15 at the headquarters of Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP). The display features seven works by Igor Jesus, curated by Luísa Santos.

The exhibition showcases photographs and videos produced using handmade lenses. The images show objects with undulating shapes, in black and white, created through effects of light and optical illusion.

‘I make the lenses to produce these images, these deformations. It's as if I were sculpting with light, controlling the light to model the images,’ explains the artist, guaranteeing that the effect created in the photographs does not come from digital manipulation.

‘What interested me was giving the camera the ability to produce transformed images,’ he explains. ‘It's as if the camera had an eye disease and produced visual deformations. I try to take advantage of these deformations to produce new images of the concrete world, of objects, in this case sculptures.’

Igor Jesus made these works as a resident artist at Arts Lab, a programme run by the Centre for Communication and Culture Studies at UCP's Faculty of Human Sciences. ‘This project is the result of the artist's creativity, but also of his interaction with FCH students, researchers and teachers during his artistic residency,’ says Paulo Campos Pinto, Director of the Gallery.

Luísa Santos, the curator of this exhibition and a professor at the Faculty of Human Sciences, reveals that this project is not limited to the exhibition but that there will also be works by the artist scattered around the faculty building. ‘We won't have an inauguration intentionally, because the idea is for people to walk around the building and find various pieces and discover other narratives’.

‘Animistic Glass: multidimensional visions’ is on show at the Fundação Amélia de Mello Gallery, at UCP's headquarters in Lisbon, and can be visited every working day between 2 pm and 5 pm.