Everything, in fact, is the tip of a mystery.[1]

 

Railings and ruins anticipate the harsh atmosphere of a basement. Where once stood an old wine cellar, a dead-end corridor hides the traces of another time, the ambiguous sensations of a delirium go on distilling.

 

Based on a dialogue with the space of Belo Campo, Henrique Biatto’s installation drawing unfolds among the fissures and marks left on this raw, essential surface. Canil [Kennel], the artist’s first solo show in Lisbon, reflects hierarchies and structures that move across relationships through control tools, to which natural defence and attack weapons emerge from survival instinct.

 

There is always a more fragile side. Keeping to the escapes and traps of the depths of human nature, at the intersection of different matters, tensions between threshold and equilibrium rise to the surface. Deploying the action and reaction conducive to aspects of interspecies interaction, scathing signs reveal a mirror of the I and the Other in the form and counter-form of the tiny things they return.

 

Found objects are transmuted, incorporating chance into compositions that intertwine subtle instants. Reflections on time and wait are established. When nothing happens, there is a miracle we are not seeing.[2] Of that which is not seen – or tends to remain concealed – the energy that precedes these instants, or the invisibility that guides the gestures, can be said.

 

Work instruments and everyday tools in dialogue with the ceramic incorporate (along with the artisanal vs industrial dualism) the nuances of a continuous experimenting. In artistic making, like here, the cadence of time is other. By displaying the traces of the process, elements and trivialities point to the notion of inhabiting the practice.

 

In Canil, the spatial notion that acts upon Biatto’s work introduces itself into the works which, suggesting clues, integrate into the environment of Belo Campo. Involving activations and instigating perceptions generate a glimpse into the tenuous contrast between brutality and delicacy, akin to the cut produced by a sharp fang.

 

When the buzzer rings, the dogs bark.

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[1] “Tudo, aliás, é a ponta de um mistério” (ROSA, João Guimarães. O espelho In: Primeiras Estórias. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2001)

[2] “Quando nada acontece, há um milagre que não estamos vendo”, ibid.