DIOGO PIMENTÃO “drawing body”

CRISTINA GERRA GALERY

 

​

​

I admire Diogo Pimentão’s work for a long time now, I have seen for the first time, a solo exhibition, at Cristina Guerra Gallery. And this was a truly experience in every senses of the word.

 

At the moment we enter the galley and read the press release of the exhibition we are welcome, and advised that we have already become a part of the exhibition. While reading these words, our feet are drawing. We, the viewers, are performing. “You are being seen. You are making art”, the text says (written by Will Kerr March, 2019). “So, pause for a moment. Go slowly. Be aware of your hand holding this paper and open your senses to the possibilities of graphite, paper, cement, and your body. Listen, see, and feel traces of the artist while understanding that you are bound by physicality, force, and gravity”

From that moment we are a part of Diogo Pimentão’s artworks. Participation itself is a creative act.

 

Sol Lewitt once said, “Obviously a drawing of a person is not a real person, but a drawing of a line is a real line.” Yet here, the distinctions between line, gesture, and person are not so clear. And it is here, in the very space between inherency and representation, where Diogo Pimentão’s art practice arises: a cosmic navigator with an unconventional captain’s log from our post-internet age of discovery. Now, the very distinctions between his body and our body, the materials at hand (and our feet), and the forces of transformation are blurred and born. “From here, we begin”.

 

The features of Pimentão work in this exhibition in not ideal, or easy to transgress for mine, and actually is not something that I pretend, what I would like to carry from his work to mine is this surprise element in his work, how the materials are not what we expect. And the relation on his drawings, sculptures, or any artworks have an intrinsic relation to our body, they need the spectator, and this relation brings to the viewer a unique experience.

 

Emulating the aesthetic values of Minimalist sculpture, Diogo Pimentão produces works that are notable for their inventive merging of medium and form. His works do not aim to represent extrinsic concepts, but rather entreat viewers to consider the materiality of their components. However, unlike the Minimalism of the movement’s forebears, in which, as Frank Stella famously noted, “What you see is what you see”, Pimentão’s works are deceptive in their apparent simplicity. The culmination of an extensive and labor intensive process of creation, Pimentão’s works complicate this notion of minimalism. By transforming paper and graphite into sculptures that appear composed of iron or steel, Pimentão demonstrates the expansive potential of drawing-based media.