Adelina Lopes’ pure images belong to a minimalist inspired poetics in which the subtle nature of the information we are presented with questions the mechanics of perception, leading to a reassessment of the existing forms, taken as signals related to the titles of the images. And it is precisely by emphasising the play on the existence of form that these exercises transcend themselves.

 

In reality, though the titles refer to a Full Image, this plenitude is only comprehended when what fills the image – water, possibly – no longer fills the image but is replaced by the line which marks its surface, the element which actually defines the level of filling. This is a strategy designed to divert attention from the filling of the image to the importance of its boundary, which thus becomes the focus of attention and the fundamental matter.

 

Exterior and interior, black and white, fullness and emptiness, proximity and distance, earliness and lateness – all are defined through the existence of a border state which, belonging simultaneously to two worlds, is in fact an interface without a physical reality but which defines the very physicality, spatiality or temporality of the worlds it separates. It functions, thus, as a kind of platform of convergence that, while it unites, at the same time creates processes of division which, by relativising or disjointing the parts, lead to the acquisition of meaning and significance.

 

 

JO

 

November 2011

 

 

Reviewed by GV, October 2012