JORGE LOPES
painting staged by
CLÉMENT LAYES

Please scroll down for English version

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Jorge und Clément haben sich 2008 kennengelernt.

 

In diesen 16 Jahren Freundschaft haben sie Kinder bekommen, den Tod der Eltern erlebt, graue Haare wachsen sehen und die rasante Entwicklung der Stadt Berlin mitbekommen.

 

Jetzt machen sie gemeinsam eine Ausstellung, die genau mit dieser Zeitspanne zu tun hat, die wir „Wandel“ nennen.

 

Das Konzept war schnell gefunden: Clément würde Jorges Gemälde inszenieren, indem er die Geschichte seines Werks durchforstet, seinen emotionalen Hintergrund und seine verborgenen Erzählungen versteht und versucht, die Notwendigkeit der Arbeit zu entdecken.

 

„Ich verstehe den Malprozess von Jorge als ein Bemühen, eine emotionale Intensität aufrechtzuerhalten. Er scheint auf der Suche nach einem 'wahren' Weg zu sein, seine Lebenserfahrung auszudrücken. Ich glaube, deshalb zeigen mir seine Bilder über die Sprache hinaus eine existenzielle Wahrheit. Sie lehren mich etwas über den Augenblick und die Abgründe meiner eigenen Gefühlswelt.

 

Dieser Intuition folgend bestand das Bemühen bei der Auswahl der Bilder für die Ausstellung darin, sie so zu betrachten, wie Jorge während des Malens das Werk betrachtete. Mit anderen Worten, „nach Punkten zu suchen, mit denen ich mich identifiziere und an denen ich wachsen möchte“. Die hier gezeigten Werke sind Orientierungspunkte und emotionale Behälter, die sorgfältig aus der Sammlung des Künstlers ausgewählt wurden. Bei der Betrachtung der Werke stellte sich auch die Frage, was mit den Gemälden geschehen soll, die nie ausgestellt werden, die nicht wirklich fertig oder zufriedenstellend sind. Wie können wir sie loslassen?”

 

Wir hielten es für wichtig, diese Geste des Abschieds sichtbar zu machen. Die Gemälde, die „nie entstanden sind“, in der Ausstellung zu haben, ist eine Art Ritual, um die Veränderung anzuerkennen und dieser vergangenen Lebensphase „Danke und Auf Wiedersehen“ zu sagen.

 

Dieser Versuch, mit der Gegenwart in Einklang zu kommen, erinnert an eine Performance, die Clément 2012 mit dem Titel „Dreamed Apparatus“ kreierte. Die Idee war, eine Linie träumen zu lassen: Während ein Performer eine Linie mit Sand zeichnet, radiert der andere sie aus und schafft so unendliche Formen, die so schnell verschwinden, wie sie auftauchen.

 

Diese Sisyphus Praxis hat auch mit der Unmittelbarkeit unseres emotionalen Zustands zu tun und damit, wie die Zeit uns verwandelt. Wir haben uns dafür entschieden, einige dieser zarte Sandarbeiten auf dem Boden zu hinterlassen, um eine Spur dieses Moments unserer Begegnung zu bewahren.

 

Jorge und Clément, Oktober 2024

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English text​

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Jorge and Clément met in 2008.

 

In these 16 years of friendship they had children, experienced the death of parents, seen grey hair grow and the rapid change of the city of Berlin.

 

Now they’re collaborating for an exhibition that has to do exactly with this thickness of time we call ‘change’.

 

The concept came about quickly: Clément would stage Jorge's painting, going back through the history of his work, understanding its emotional background and hidden narratives, trying to discover the need for the work to be done.

 

‘I understand Jorge's painting process as an endeavour to maintain an emotional intensity. He seems to be looking for a ‘true’ way to express his experience of life. I think that's why, beyond language, his paintings show me an existential truth. They teach me something about the moment and the abyss of my own emotional world.

 

Following this intuition, the effort to select the paintings for the exhibition was to look at them in the same way that Jorge looks at the work while he is painting, in other words, ‘to look for points that I identify with and where I want to grow’. The works shown here are landmarks and emotional containers carefully chosen from the artist's collection. Looking at the work in this way also came the question: what to do with the paintings that will never be exhibited, those who aren't really finished or satisfactory. How do we let them go?’

 

We thought it was important to make this gesture of farewell visible. Having the paintings that ‘never came to be’ in the exhibition is a form of ritual to recognise the change and say ‘thank you and good by’ to this time of life that has passed.

 

This attempt to be in tune with the present resonates with a performance Clément created in 2012 called “Dreamed Apparatus”. The idea was to let a line dream: while one performer draws a line with sand, the other erases it, creating infinite shapes that disappear as soon as they appear.

 

This Sisyphean practice also has to do with being in tune with the immediacy of our emotional state and how time transforms us. We chose to leave some of this fragile sand work on the floor as a trace of this moment in our encounter.

 

Jorge and Clément, Oktober 2024

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Vita

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Jorge Lopes_1981_Lisbon

www.jorge-lopes.com I @jorge_lopes_ 

 

Graduated in Fine Arts from ESAD - Caldas da Rainha in 2004, has been living and working in Berlin since 2006. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions and his works are represented in public and private collections in Germany, Denmark, England, Japan, Norway and Portugal. He was a member of the Kunstlerhaus-Dortmund and co-founder of the ETAW project. With interests ranging from philosophy to architecture and the human condition as a raw material, he has developed most of his work in painting and drawing. In the exhibition “Meet them all over again” (2023) and with the large-format canvases CARE, GRATITUDE, SERENITY, COMFORT and HOPE, he is constantly researching what feelings are and how they are present in our relationship with ourselves and with others. In his latest series ‘Is it because of the morning light?’ (2023), ‘Dancing’, ‘The Essence’, ‘A cloud never dies’ (2024), he continues to explore concepts such as landscape and space, lightness and transformation.

 

Clément Layes_1978_France

www.clementlayes.com I @clementlayes

 

Attended the school for contemporary circus and theatre for three years and studied art history and philosophy at the university of Lyon. he received dance training at the Conservatoire National de Région (CNR) and at the Conservatoire National Superior de Musique et de Danse de Lyon (CNeMD). From 2004 to 2010, he worked as a performer with Odile Duboc and Boris Charmatz, among others. He had his breakthrough as a choreographer with the solo “Allege”; (2010) and was invited by numerous theatres and festivals in Germany, Europe, Canada and the USA. He received the jury prize of the Infant Festival (Novi SAD, Serbia) and was awarded at the Prix Jardin d’europe 2011. In 2018, Clément Layes accepted the invitation of the Venice Biennale to present a retrospective of his artistic works to date. In the course of his artistic career, he developed a working method that confronts choreography, visual art and conceptual thinking in a research around objects of everyday life. His working method has been described and thematised in several publications, most recently in Martina Ruhsam’s publication, Nicht-menschlichen Körper im Zeitgenössischen Tanz, which was awarded the Tanzwissenschaft Preis NRW 2021.

Since 2014, Clément Layes has been critically examining theatre as a place of art presentation. He co-founded the event series 3 AM at Flutgraben e.v. together with Jasna L. Vinovrski, where more than 80 artists and over 1000 spectators took part in the events from 2014-2017. In 2019, another series of events followed: Flutgraben Performances as well as the residencies series – Flutgraben Residences. Public in Private Studio and Flutgraben e.v. has become an important alternative space for dance and performance in Berlin.