Group Show at Andar de Baixo
Lisbon, PT
15 de Nov - 20 de Dez 2025
Roger Paulino, Hugo Bernardos & Simão Mota Carneiro.
As Clarice Lispector wrote, “one cannot speak of what one feels; one speaks of the margins of what one feels”, and it is precisely these margins that are spoken of in this space, inhabited by transparencies and light shadows. Every gesture is a temporary harbour, every form an unstable passage. Nothing is decoration, nothing is ornament: each element seems to float in a state of altered gravity, like a blind choreography, absolutely necessary. The materials—fragile, malleable, porous—carry the memory of touch, of time, of waiting. It is not a matter of building, but of preserving: traces, breaths, invisible intentions. A minimal tension, like that of a spider’s web in oblique light.
And, ultimately, everything hinges on this paradox: a web that both traps and sets free. That envelops, yet does not constrain. That produces not images, but experiences of closeness and distance. It is a song, yes, but a silent, voiceless one, like the sound heard within the inner chambers of one’s own body. A whispered chorus, which commands respect even without speaking. In this sense, Canto da Teia is a poetic act crafted by many hands, where the design ceases to be an instrument and becomes a condition. A necessity that precedes form, and which perhaps – as Henri Michaux said – “does not seek to say, but to be”. The ground-floor space is no longer a container, but a diaphragm: a place of passage between what is seen and what is done. There, where the line becomes body, and the body becomes waiting. And it is at that moment that the work takes place.
Hugo Bernardo, Roger Paulino and Simão Mota Carneiro present a body of work as expanded drawing that has lost its centre to become a system, an organism, a resonance. None of the three imposes itself or withdraws: it derives from a balance in tension, like a score performed by six hands in a single breath. Here, the material is not given; it is sought; the line is not imposed; it is listened to. The line is both principle and abyss. It enters into a dichotomy; it is Ariadne’s thread, but also a labyrinth: guide and loss.
Federica Elena