Álvaro Lapa

Os Criminosos e as suas Propriedades [Criminals and their Properties] is a work from the eponymous series, shown at the Buchholz Gallery in Lisbon in 1975. The black grid is the formal element that links all these works: everything happens outside of this suggestion of a barred window. A background is established by the encounter of the black of the grid with the green surface. This ground is traversed by a red horizontal bar and a collaged strip of paper, with an inscription: “requerimento p/instalar um baloiço do tipo infantil, c/ a promessa de não o utilizar (servindo apenas p/ver)” [application f. installation of a children’s swing, w. the assurance of not using it (serving only t. be seen)]. The written word destabilises the reading of the work, setting up a dialogue with the image and establishing a certain inconsistency between the verbal and the visual. The fine red and blue lines of the “swing” dividing the surface now contrast with the black marks of the grid. The work’s title alludes to the artist’s own life, referring to the times he visited his father in prison. Other points of reference might be the book My Properties (1929) by Henri Michaux, an artist who, like Lapa, sought to find correspondences between the acts of writing and painting. The title would then allude to the properties of the imagination as an instrument for structuring the self, the mark of a personal mythology via the artist’s thoughts, desires and memories.

AS