Blind Image #125 (Blue image)

Blind Image #125 (Blue image)

  • 2006
  • Acrylic on canvas
  • 199,5 x 199,5 cm
  • Cat. P_744
  • Acquired in 2008
  • Observations: The following text appears in the work; 'Still from a film (above): Over the top of my plate I could see Chenault’s legs, small and firm and tan. She was so close to naked, and so apparently unaware of it, that I felt helpless' This is an extract from the novel The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson (1998), which was filmed in 2011 by Bruce Robinson (and shown in Spain under the title Diario de un seductor).
By:
Beatriz Herráez

Blind Image is one of the most significant series produced by João Louro in the past few decades. As the title says, it features blind, monochrome images whose surfaces act as mirrors, reflecting the viewer's gaze. It is based on the suppression or cancellation of images as a strategy for sparking curiosity in the observer.

As with other pieces in the series, Blind Image # 125 (Blue image) (2006) contains a footnote in the form of a short story that seems to be a fragment of a longer text, alluding indirectly to something that is absent. Curator María de Corral writes of this work and its text references that it is capable of giving rise to 'different approaches to what is visible and different perspectives for considering the image, helping us to realise that the gap between words and pictures is narrower than that between words and objects, between culture and nature'. That gap hints at the underlying idea in Walter Benjamin's The Dialectics of Seeing, and his desire for objects to return the gaze of observers.

Accordingly, an analogy can be drawn between the surfaces in Louro's works, which act as interfaces (a modified camera obscura) and other tricks of optical perspective dreamed up centuries ago by scientists and artists: artefacts that brought the gaze to a stop and enabled images to be constructed more gradually. This allegory of the acceleration (or rather deceleration) of the image and its mass production is one of the main areas explored in Louro's work.

Beatriz Herráez

 
By:
Beatriz Herráez
João Louro
Lisbon 1963

Since his first solo exhibitions in the early 1990s, João Louro has produced a large body of work including photos, video, paintings and installations. His works include frequent references to the history of philosophy, literature and modern art (from the historical avant garde to minimalism and conceptual art) but also nods to Western popular culture, mainly in the form of film and music. A system of associations and correspondences is built up via a rich web of references that includes such names as Gustave Flaubert, Samuel Beckett, Walter Benjamin and Herman Melville, to mention but a few of the characters that appear in his works.

João Louro seeks to explore the limits of expression and reflect on the construction of images in the contemporary world. His images are filled with signs that sometimes appear as blank surfaces, as mirrors that reflect the gaze of viewers and force them to decode the contents for themselves

He was chosen to represent Portugal at the Venice Biennale in 2015, when María de Corral acted as curator. His works have been shown at numerous international events in Porto, Paris, Río de Janeiro, Santa Monica and elsewhere, and in solo exhibitions at institutions including the Elvas Museum of Contemporary Art (Portugal, 2015), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (2010) and the Joan Miró Foundation (Barcelona, 2001).

Beatriz Herráez

 
«Big Bang» (Lisbon, 2007). «L. A. Confidential», Christopher Grimes Gallery (Los Ángeles, 2008). «From Goya to our times. Perspectives of the Banco de España Collection», Musée Mohammed VI d'Art Moderne et Contemporain (Rabat, 2017-2018).
Yolanda Romero & Isabel Tejeda De Goya a nuestros días. Miradas a la Colección Banco de España, Madrid & Rabat, AECID y FMN, 2017. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 3.