Aqui e em Todo o Lado
Brotéria, Lisboa
30 January - 12 March 2025
José Pedro Cortes’ body of work stems from an ever-present interest in observing the world around him. His images, whether constructed or captured out of instinct, are subjective and political and follow a realist tradition that deems everyday life’s material and pictorial potential as a mirror of the contemporary world.
In Aqui e em todo o lado, Cortes shows us a set of images which reflect on a time of uncertainty and change. The human body and its relationship with nature, namely with water, is a recurring theme in this exhibition. Its ideas of immersion and suspension convey a sense of seduction but also of anxiety. In one of these photographs, Cortes shows us an image of a neophyte (a person who has been recently baptized). A statue of a male figure undressing, his face covered by his arms while removing his clothes, already partly uncovered. The gesture represents a transition between two states, making visible that which exists between before and after. In a way, he is demanding our attention so that we may witness the dive he is about to surrender to. It is therefore important to define the experience of submersion, to reflect on the places of impermanence and to recognize the physical and psychological tension to which this body “in transition” will be exposed. This movementof absolute rendition, and a contemplative one,has nothing passive about it and counteracts the potential involuntary superficiality of one’s life. It is amovement that reveals how we perceive the world. On this matter, Robert Walser wrote that «we don’tneed to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much.» (A Little Ramble, 1914).
Aqui e em todo o lado is woven under a carefuland sensitive gaze on the human experience. It tears the membrane of banality that covers all things – characters, gestures and everything else.It fabricates a day-to-day experience so as to elevate these things and grant them the nature and importance of rituals. Each photograph is like an“in-between place”, a liminal space, which demands our silence and slowness to reveal itself. Although autonomous in themselves, these images are, as a whole, a metaphor for the movement between the visible and the invisible.
Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisboa
15.September - 15.October 2022
Patrícia is an installation of four 16-minute videos specifically created by José Pedro Cortes for the context of Galeria Francisco Fino.
Patrícia Mamona is an Olympic triple-jumper. Her training sessions usually take place twice a day and include weights and explosion exercises at the gym, as well as jumping and running.
Guided by trainer José Uva, the sessions unfold at the Jamor High Performance Sport Centre, a venue for many athletes from other disciplines. However, only a few are at Patrícia’s level.
Most of the training consists of short, precise exercises aimed at fine tuning muscle precision, bodily balance and jumping technique — position of the feet, posture, approach, etc. — to generate fitness-peaks during the competition periods. Many of the exercises (especially those with weights and machines) are marked by tremendous intensity and violence, but also by a feeling of fragility due to the necessary precision, the need to stop the training as soon as a muscle is off, and above all to the constant, abstract focus on some jumps, in some distant future afternoon in Tokyo.
In October 2018, two years away from the Tokyo Olympics (which were then postponed to 2021), I suggested we could work together towards something in the future, something between photography and video. She agreed, so I started visiting the Jamor Centre regularly.
Our arrangement was simple: I could film or photograph whatever I wanted
without any restrictions as long as she did not have to interrupt any of the sessions. Her congeniality, discretion and professionalism made me feel almost invisible, as I either anticipated some of her exercises, or was overtaken by others.
It was a long and complicit process that lasted until September 2021, a month after her Silver Medal at the Tokyo Olympics.
Patrícia is a portrait of the time of a body at work.
About its power, precision and beauty.
A portrait of a woman and an athlete.
Patrícia
4 HD videos, 16 min. each
21 Photographs, Inkjet prints, 20x30cm
4 screens video projection preview:
Clips from videos:
Robert Morat Galley, Berlin
20.May - 30.July 2022
“Bright Red” brings together new works by Portuguese artist José Pedro Cortes. The title alludes to a visual deficiency very common in human males, a mild color blindness that shifts the color red (or what is known as red) to green, changing the reading of the color spectrum. This implies that, as a compensation mechanism, many color-blind men “read” the color red in context and not as stand-alone information. Using this example as a metaphor, Cortes underlines that it is through contextual reading that we know what a certain color is, and, in a broader sense, how to interpret the world around us.
His photographs – being landscapes, portraits or still lives – function as a map of visual possibilities. Like Cortes says: “The time of my images reflects our time of constant doubt: impulse or fabrication, vulnerability or strength, surface or something more.”
Robert Morat Gallery
Linienstraße 107
10115 Berlin, Germany
www.robertmorat.de
Curated by Sylvia Chivaratanond
Escola das Artes - Universidade Católica - Porto
14.October - 17.December 2021
“The future belongs to those who understand that doing more with less is compassionate, prosperous, and enduring, and thus more intelligent, even competitive.” Paul Hawken, environmentalist and serial entrepreneur
Cintura explores the vast structures of the VCI, an intricate map of highways and circular rings that connect to the bridges of the center of Porto to the outskirts of the city along the Douro River.
Originating in 1960s and expanded in 1989, the VCI is described as arteries leading in and out the city and has had a vital role in the formation and development of Porto. Coinciding with its growth, Cortes grew up using the VCI as a teenager and draws an intimate portrait of its pulsating system as seen through his lens.
As with all of Cortes’s work, these photographs evoke intimate moments that are uncanny and personal, almost as if the VCI is a character on its own. So much movement and people pass through this system on a daily basis it’s hard to imagine that it ever slows down, as if Cortes is reminding us that humanity may be on the same trajectory- a metaphor about contemporary culture, perhaps lack thereof. Or perhaps he wants to point to the mere transgressive acts that have occurred on these roads. In contrast to nature, the VCI is man-made and serves the needs of the capitalist in terms of manifesting commerce and trade. Yet the irony remains that we must get into our cars and use these roads in order to get out to nature or as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: Adopt the pace of nature- her secret is patience; indeed it's something we must all adopt to be able to weave in and out of the VCI.
Sylvia Chivaratanond
Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisboa
8.May - 24.July 2021
Galeria Francisco Fino is pleased to present Corpo Capital (Body Capital) by José Pedro Cortes. The exhibition, his second at the gallery, features a broad selection of new works centered around the artist’s recurring themes – the human figure, nature and architecture – and is born out of a desire to engage with both the private and public territories. This group of images creates an ongoing dialogue with the artist’s last exhibition at the gallery as well as with his other projects, thus creating an assemblage of pictorial references and shared connections, and using photography as a tool to explore the surface of the moment we live in.
More information here www.franciscofino.com