Celibatarian Rendition II - Hotel Globo

 

(A) Materials Resistance

Demos agora a volta:… Paus, pedras, ramos, ossos, carvão, argila, pó.

Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, A Câmara, a escrita e a coisa dita… p. 293

It has a lot of mirror, this art of water and seeds that one practice here in order to make time stop and fill the city with stories of direct observation of how much the world changes and with it the street changes, the old house, the light, the bougainvillea vertiginous sense. Incorporated spaces appear here treated in the sight fashion following the trace of its antique forms subjected to new perspectives that oblige the eye to go above the floor to follow the double organization of species (walls, buildings, balconies, corners) while the inhabited space and represented in sequence since its most primitive materiality changes. Once upon a time there was a city, its centers in continuous movement, its three dimensions inverted, its inhabitants and its speeches. The celibatarian, that who since ever remains “attentive to the place speeches” recognizes that the city center reduces compressed by the largest margins.

Shifts, then, its place to see and tell from the perspective of its eye. Chooses the perspective as there is a space that invades the other, that contaminates and creates an intimate distance between “found place and lost place” from which once can give notice of an existed memory, kept between the walls, submitted to the brush… stories of neighborhood, squares, gatherings, interdicts. Watercolors… one can see.

Ana Paula Tavares, 2011.

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I met Rui Duarte de Carvalho in Lobito, in the seventies. I had read he’s premiere book “Chão de Oferta” - which already had inscribed a fulgurant path, that would mark in an innovative way the literature produced in Angola. I also knew of his participation in the seventies, in some reference exhibitions in Luanda and that was revealing of his creative disquiet, worthy of a complete artist, delicate and perfectionist. Along the years and in the strengthened of a friendship, I had the privilege of read/see a lot of his production. I remember now of his “little ox” painted in great delicacy, of the magnificent drawings for the book “Sinais misteriosos”…. one can already see of his incommensurable passion for the desert and its nomad people. It was with great surprise that I have now taken notice of the existence of one of his projects -  “Rendição do Celibatário II”, result of sporadic passages in Luanda, having the Hotel Globo (but not exclusively) as “observation point”. His look is testimonie of a city in transition, with small notes from the everyday and a notable chromatic softness, what makes us wait for a future large exhibit of his pictorial work, with the wisdom imparted in everything he did.

António Ole, 2011.

 

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Texts written to the watercolors exhibition from Rui Duarte de Carvalho realized under the celebration of the 22º anniversary of the Cultural and Recreational Association of Chá de Caxinde, between 15 and 17 of February 2011, in Luanda.

 

Photographies from Susana Paiva.