Returning to a technique he first experimented with at the end of the 1970s, in 2002 Fernando Calhau produced Untitled #308 (This is not a Landscape), a work which demonstrates a conceptual tendency and which consists of a composition of words created in neon (or argon, to be more specific). However, whilst previously the neon words had been employed in combination with elements which served as a background, forming just one part of a composition, here they are fixed directly to the wall of the exhibition space, free from any framing structure. The neon words thus incorporate not only the very wall that they are mounted on – that they depend on – as part of the work, but all of the exhibition space that they illuminate, ultimately producing a material component and an immaterial or atmospheric component.

In this exercise made of light, Fernando Calhau appears to deny the black that he had accustomed us to – but only at first glance. In fact, just as the phrase ‘This is not a landscape’ takes the form of a negation – as if provocatively indicating to us that the subject of the work is actually absent –, the work itself also takes the form of a negative operation: this is a piece which illuminates, certainly, yet it only illuminates because there is darkness to illuminate, a darkness which is thus made equally perceptible.

Margarida Brito Alves
October 2011