joão vasco paiva coverage - edouard malingue gallery to trading outposts such as macau and hong...
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Edouard Malingue Gallery
馬 凌 畫 廊 Sixth floor, 33 Des Voeux Road Central, Hong Kong edouardmalingue.com
João Vasco Paiva Coverage
27 March 2017 BerlinArtLink “Interview // ‘Room Service’ Bar by João Vasco Paiva in Hong Kong” Link: http://www.berlinartlink.com/2017/03/27/interview-room-service-bar-by-joao-vasco-paiva-in-hong-kong/
26 November 2016 The News Lens ‘ ’
Link: https://www.thenewslens.com/article/54878
2 November 2016 COBO Social ‘Unidentifiable Objects: João Vasco Paiva’ Link: https://www.cobosocial.com/dossiers/unidentifiable-objects-joao-vasco-paiva/?utm_campaign=socialmedia_art&utm_medium=fb_organic&utm_source=facebook_cs&utm_content=regular_eng_textlink
October 2016 Art Asia Pacific “GREEN ISLAND JOÃO VASCO PAIVA” Link: http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/WebExclusives/GreenIsland
16 October 2016 MingPao Weekly “ ”
Link: http://www.mingpaoweekly.com/50015-%E5%B1%95%E8%A6%BD%EF%BC%9A%E3%80%8A%E9%9D%92%E6%B4%B2%E3%80%8B
7 October 2016 The Stand News “ (Joao) ” Link: https://www.thestandnews.com/art/%E5%91%A8%E5%A5%A7-joao-%E6%80%9D%E8%80%83%E7%90%86%E6%83%B3%E5%9C%8B/
5 October 2016 Artomity “João Vasco Paiva” Link: https://artomity.wordpress.com/2016/10/05/joao-vasco-paiva/
September 2016 Arts News “ Green Island - solo exhibition by João Vasco Paiva” Link: http://arts-news.net/artevent/event/%E5%91%A8%E5%A5%A7%E5%80%8B%E5%B1%95-%E3%80%8C%E9%9D%92%E6%B4%B2%E3%80%8D
21 September 2016 Frieze “Postcard from Brisbane” Link: https://frieze.com/article/postcard-brisbane-0
June 2016 Artomity “Joao Vasco Paiva, Benches, Ramps, Ledges, Ground”
15 October 2015 The Peak “Extraordinary Objects” by John Batten Pages 140 – 145
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25 Mar 2015 The Art Newspaper “Guided tour of the fair’s avenues” Link: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/media/gallery/Guided-tour-of-the-fairs-avenues/37341
Cast Away Jo O Vasco Paiva
JOÃO VASCO PAIVA, Shelter, 2014, fiberglass sculpture on wool carpet, 170 × 700 × 400 cm. CourtesyEdouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong.
Cast AwayJoão Vasco PaivaWeb Exclusive BY HG MastersFundação OrienteSince its origins a century ago, modernist abstraction has navigated between two poles: hyper-rationalism andromantic transcendentalism. Today, however, when so many of our formative explorations into the unknownare conducted in the digital realm—where the technological sublime inspires as much (if not more)wonderment than nature—the two are no longer such oppositional coordinates on the map.
At the heart of “Cast Away,” an exhibition at Macau’s Fundação Oriente by Hong Kong-transplant João VascoPaiva, is a two-channel video, Unlimited (all works 2014). One screen shows an animation of a flight over theocean captured from a Google Earth voyage over an undistinguishable watery expanse—Google Earthprojects sunny, calm skies over most of the globe, in spite of reality. On the flipside of a walled partition is arapid projection of different maritime signal flags, geometrical designs that correspond to letters of the alphabetand are used to broadcast a ship’s conditions, such as “man overboard” or “dragging an anchor.” Together, thetwo projections are digital-era re-imaginings of aspects of the European exploration and colonialism that gavebirth to trading outposts such as Macau and Hong Kong—the seemingly endless expanses of ocean thatsailors endured along the way and the new communication languages developed while circumnavigating theglobe.
JOÃO VASCO PAIVA, Unlimited (still), 2014, two-channel HD video projection, 40 min. Courtesy EdouardMalingue Gallery, Hong Kong.
The title “Cast Away” takes on other meanings across the exhibition’s four rooms. Paiva placed resin “casts” offlotsam collected from Hong Kong beaches (the artist lives on Hong Kong’s Lamma Island) on top of six light-box-topped pedestals, causing the blue and purplish objects to glow in an eerie, artificial manner. He made astone-resin copy of a piece of Styrofoam packaging, which stood on its end like a cubist sculpture or afuturistic skyscraper. In opposite corners were four, small dark-blue forms, Seafoam, molded from the roundedbits of plastic that circulate the oceans like the mariners of old—and occasionally wash up on shore, where,like many a salted sailor, they are not always a welcome sight. A gray resin cast of “blind spots” (those circular-dotted panels in the floor that indicate to the blind to stop walking) functioned like a floor mat at the entrance—it was unclear whether this was a found object—and combined ideas of a charting journeys through theunknown.
On the walls of the galleries were various riffs on abstract painting. A triptych of canvases—entitled “PortolanI–III,” which were the early navigation charts made by Italian, Spanish and Portuguese explores—are madefrom old sail cloth, their brown stains resembling coastlines found on the old maps. Safety / Comfort I & II are apair of paintings that comprise a square made from sea-green and a deep-blue vinyl seat-cushions with arectangular bar hanging beneath them in orange life-preserver material, marked with a lone reflective strip.
JOÃO VASCO PAIVA, Safety / Comfort I, 2014, PVC and nylon, 108 × 91 x 10 cm. Courtesy EdouardMalingue Gallery, Hong Kong.
JOÃO VASCO PAIVA, Safety / Comfort II, 2014, PVC and nylon, 108 × 91 x 10 cm. Courtesy EdouardMalingue Gallery, Hong Kong.
If Paiva’s formal language is austere, and the objects at first somewhat unyielding of their latent stories, mostof the pieces in “Cast Away” achieved their own integrity, tracing unexpected threads still linking the early,economically motivated explorations by Europeans around the globe and the modern-day, internationaleconomy—largely through all the garbage humans have left in the wake of their travels.
The one piece that fell flat was the largest installation, Shelter, consisting of a four-by-seven-meter carpet ofsmall blue squares of varying tones—like a pixilated oceanscape—with a gray fiberglass form resembling thestern of a small, largely submerged sailboat. As the title suggests, the artist intended the latter form to evoke arefuge—though how, exactly, given the angle of the ship, and why a small, sinking sailboat would double as ahaven is unclear. As happens all too frequently with artists today, when realizing large-scale fabrications,objects start to look like stage props—that is, they become more illustrative and less tactile or precious. In thecase of Shelter, perhaps the two parts would have looked better on their own within the exhibition, but togethertheir industrially fabricated qualities suggested the artist himself sailing too far from familiar shores.Nontheless, one hopes that Paiva’s explorations into the fertile, peculiar territory of Macau are just beginning.
João Vasco Paiva’s “Cast Away” ended on June 7, 2014.
HG Masters is editor at large at ArtAsiaPacific.
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João Vasco Paiva Blanks Out Street Signs | Artinfo
BY Zoe LI | November 29, 2013
Still from “Threshold” (2013) by João Vasco Paiva.
(Courtesy artist and Edouard Malingue Gallery)
A new video by João Vasco Paiva captures street scenes in Hong Kong’s crowded Sham Shui Po, Mongkok,
and Causeway Bay neighborhoods, but the sign boards along the streets have been blanked out by the artist.
The video, “Threshold” (2013), is disconcerting as by removing the content of the signs, Vasco Paiva has
emphasized their existence. The large amount of blank white spaces seen on screen draws our attention to
the massive bombardment of advertising and directives we encounter in our daily lives and which we have
become numb to. Rather than carry an anticommerical intention, which the artist finds “too pretentious,” the
work is aiming to highlight the aesthetic qualities of advertisements and how these visual markers come to
define the cityscape of Hong Kong, and indeed of any other city.
It is also as close as we will get to seeing the world literally through the eyes of Vasco Paiva. The Portuguese
native moved to Hong Kong in 2006, and although he has settled into life here, he does not read or understand
Chinese, thus the content of street sign boards and advertisements are all lost to him.
“My friends may get annoyed by the advertising video screens installed in the back of cab seats, but it is just a
blank for me. I just maybe look at the bad design,” says the artist.
His new work is currently at a solo exhibition that just opened at Edouard Malingue Gallery, titled “Near and
Elsewhere.” The show sees the artist further developing his ideas based on the aesthetic qualities of the city’s
“non-places” (see an interview with the artist here) and cementing his signature of “blanking” mundane sign
boards, emphasizing the outlines of shapes, and casting sculpture from found objects related to the streets.
There are the floor sculptures that resemble speed bumps and a series of resin casts of styrofoam boxes
found in different parts of the city.
João Vasco Paiva “A Brief Moment in Time I” (2013)
For “A Brief Moment in Time I” (2013), the artist studied the advertisement posters that pile onto the front of
Hong Kong’s closed-down shops. He lifted the outline of the mass of posters and carved that in wood, adding
subtle depth by painting in beige and white hues. The sculptural work decontextualizes advertising posters to
study the chaotic and randomly arranged form. It continues the artist’s exploration of transitional spaces,
similar to his series of MTR maps (“Station” and “Map” from 2011).
“I wanted to change one quality of the object and turn it into something completely different,” says the artist. He
also achieves this in “Untitled (Lumberyard Array 3)” (2013). The pillar of just over a meter tall is painted cobalt
blue and covered in deep cuts. The markings were already on the object when Vasco Paiva went to lumber
shops to search for wood pieces. He then stripped it down to its elemental form before painting over it. “These
work men were just doing their daily work, making marks on the wood without realising that they are making
something quite interesting,” says Vasco Paiva.
“Near and Elsewhere” until January 18, 2014 at Edouard Malingue Gallery, www.edouardmalingue.com
João Vasco Paiva "Objects Encrypted" at Goethe Institut Hong Kong until June 8.
(Courtesy João Vasco Paiva and Saamlung )
Hong Kong-based Portuguese artist João Vasco Paiva addresses the “non-places” of the city asproposed by anthropologist Marc Augé. These locations often of a purely functional purpose, such asHong Kong’s MTR stations, parking lots, and the backs of high-rise buildings, are taken for granted bylocal residents, but have captured the attention of the artist.
“I wonder how these places can become landmarks,” says Paiva whose current exhibition “ObjectsEncrypted (http://www.goethe.de/ins/cn/hon/kue/en11035555v.htm)” is presented by Edouard
Malingue Gallery (http://www.edouardmalingue.com/artists/44/jo%C3%A3o-vasco-paiva)at theGoethe Institut Hong Kong until June 8. “The keyword to everything I’m doing is framing. It’scalling people’s attention to it.”
The exhibition contrasts the institutional space againstthe neglected urban space. A series of small-scale worksfeature plaster casts of the texture of concretepavements and tar-covered roads found in back alleys
INTERVIEW: João Vasco Paiva FramesHong Kong's Non-PlacesBY ZOE LI | MAY 21, 2013
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near his studio in Wanchai. These textures are furtherexplored in monochrome sculptures that juxtapose thecastings with sharp edges that are machine-cut bysoftware that Paiva designed to mimic natural erosion.Site-specific work has also been created, takinginspiration from the ceiling structure of the Hong KongArts Centre building that houses the Goethe Institute.
We chat with Paiva at his studio about the aesthetics ofdecay, framing the mundane, and private versus publicspace in Hong Kong.
What places in Hong Kong did you explore for this new series of works?
I’m basically confronting two different places, the institutional place where the show is going to be, andat other spaces actually in the streets behind here in Wanchai in the alleys, they are like a backstage, notdesigned for people to go into. Mostly they are not planned which means what happens in those placesin visual terms is pretty random. It’s a global act of many individuals doing things to these places.
For example there’s a couple of underground parking lots here on Lockhart Road. Many people don’tdrive and choose to see these places only from the outside and we assume that we know what is inside.Ithink these places have aesthetic value and I wonder how can they actually become a landmark, becausethey do say a lot about this decade, but they are often ignore because they are merely functional.
For this show, the organization of the exhibit is mimicking or mocking the organization of the pipes inthe alleys. There are some small pieces that are displayed on the walls of the gallery according to theorder and structure of how they are seen on the street, which is pretty random. For example when yousee those forbidden signs near an escalator you see a sign telling you to hold onto the handrail then a nosmoking sign then a no eating sign. They have a certain arrangement that may not have any aestheticpropose but in the end there is composition structure that can be explored.
I’m transplanting all these things into the gallery space but this transplanting has implications. I’m notdoing an exhibition of found objects, there is a process and this transplant cannot be somethingaccidental.
Can you tell us about the site-specific sculptures?
There are a number of sculptures based on the ceiling of the Hong Kong Arts Centre which looks like anisometric grid, with all these triangles. I’m casting these triangular shapes and transforming them intosculpture that also takes properties from concrete blocks that you see on the street.
How does your the software that makes random cuts mimicking natural erosion continue
your examination of neglected spaces?
There is a very interesting thing about ruins. We like ruins because it shows us there was this civilization,we like it even more because there is time that goes through things, and that gives us a sense ofsomething that is bigger than us, that was here longer than us. Here in Hong Kong you see a lot of placesthat already have all these elements of decay that were created by time.
Go to Hollywood Road and see these wall trees jumping out of the concrete, or on Lamma Island where Ilive there are cement paths throughout the island but nature is always coming in, making breaks in thecement, breaking it up with all these cracks. This is the kind of aesthetic I’m interested in.
My way to perceive this besides the castings is through software that cuts sharp geometric lines. So thereis a very big contrast between the shapes the plaster casts creates and the cuts by the software. I thinkthis is the contrast you see in a broken temple in Greece.
It’s this sense of when it comes to creating objects, creating art, how can we let this get out of ourcontrol, how can this be made by a series of elements, such as time and weather and a group of peoplewho collectively add to it.
It seems to be quite a dispassionate examination of the human experience in the urban
world. Are you directly interested in people?
My interest in people comes from this interest of what people create and the place that people inhabit,rather than talking about people’s experience, which could be pretentious, because who am I to talkabout other people?
There are people here that I see everyday and I know exactly what they do. I’m interested in the spacethat designs their lives. There is a lack of private space in Hong Kong and people’s lives are mostly on thestreets. People very easily change the streets, they do things to the streets. It reclaims the street and thepublic space as their own, it’s a very strong intervention.
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