Macau
New City – New Works by Rui Calçada Bastos
2010.03.06 - 2010.04.11
# New City – New Works by Rui Calçada Bastos
# 2010.03.06 - 2010.04.11
# Opening:2010-03-05 7:00pm
# Artists:Rui Calçada Bastos
# Curator:José Drummond
Organized by Art for All Society (AFA), New City – New Works by Rui Cal?ada Bastos will open at 7:00pm of this coming Friday, 5th March. The exhibition is curated by José Drummond and showcases the latest works produced in Macao by Rui Cal?ada Bastos, a Portuguese artist living and working in Berlin, place acclaimed as one of the most important centers for contemporary art in Europe.
In the body of work of this exhibition composed of 14 large size photographs and one video installation, Rui Cal?ada Bastos draws upon his deep insights of the city, so far away from the Macao where he had grown up. This recent return to the city he once knew, surprised and inspired him to develop peculiar atmospheres based on his observations of the growth and changes of Macao. In addition to inciting the innovative imagination of audiences, "the ‘alter-spaces’ presented in his recent works seek to propose a debate on problematic issues such as the position of the human being in his environment."
"A man walks alone in an empty road. He looks back. He still wonders about his position and it’s not clear that he knows exactly where he’s going. A woman looks for rental opportunities but turns her head when being observed. Is she a transit character in an Asian fiction or simply the human element that seems to be missing in ‘New City’. Another man is the only living figure in a sweeping construction site. Apparently lost in the enormous scale around him, he validates the machinery, becoming the soft focus of the ambiguous situation he is in. They are different from the one walking in the ‘dream park’, found in a digitally enhanced prospect of a near future. The about to be, always brighter, where skies have different colours and flowers are bigger than life."
The ending, which depicts a gambling couple, seeks to convey the message that "something is wrong and things may not be what they seem - but aren’t they another pretension, a ‘propaganda’ of something that perhaps will never exists?" Such an extreme environment is leading us to an invisible world. "‘No U-Turn’ seems to convey the underlying message in ‘New City’."
"This indigent and abandoned place in heartless disorder is also diagnosed in ‘Few Steps’ - the ‘finishing touch’ video of ‘New City’. In ‘Few Steps’ the axis of this disturbance emanates from the inability to reconcile the dream with harsh reality, where being in the proper place or belonging to something is reduced to the disclosure of our own loneliness."
The New City – New Works by Rui Cal?ada Bastos is an attempt to go beyond the realm of art, approaching real life. Assuming that observation is one important element of science, each part of the works is a document of some sort. Rather than establishing any ‘absolute truth’, however, the works of Rui Cal?ada Bastos pose questions for individual interpretation. Organised by Art for All Society and sponsored by the Secretariat for Social Affairs and Culture of the Macao SAR, the exhibition raises its curtain on Friday 5th March at 7:00pm at Rua Francisco Xavier Pereira No. 45-49, FL/3, Luen Hing Knitting Factory, Macau, and closes on 11st April 2010. Reservations are required for all visits.
