Bruno Cidra

Heavy Stone

by Eva Mendes

We react to the change of place among the substances [1] as a sensitive experience that defines certain gestures and assigns them to artistic objects with a (more or less spiritual) poetic charge. There lies upon the au courant perceiver, submerged in an existence permeated by symbols and history, the faculty of evoking beyond the encounter, and the evident reception that succeeds the emotion whose intrepidity naturally brings one closer to it. Nested into the surrounding landscape, where the time of the green scenery timidly tears through all plans of observation, the heavy stone rests while levitating from its impermanence – a large sculpture that is moored through iron, yet buoyant through paper – that awaits, in molten silence, that moment of transformation.

With black floorings and glass walls, the Casa do Volfrâmio can be perceived as an open-air glass bell, a place where the years of washing and preparation of its namesake ore conceded to it an intrinsic relationship between the labor of metal and its intimate connection to the hands and bodies that touched it on the verge of a great war. The wolf’s soot, from the German wolfram – so called for it devours tin at high melting points –, it would originally come to be known as tungsten, a Nordic word that, etymologically, translates as heavy stone. Its proximity to the water courses of the monastery lake, then conducted through a medieval stone aqueduct, would germinate in what would come to be a brief and slow stream of heavy waters – whose fruit to be pic ked was that gray and sharp stone that could scratch even diamond.

People could be seen far into a considerable distance, from five hundred to a thousand meters: women, who washed the mineralized soil under roofs, rolled up sleeves, bare feet, skirts gathered between their knees to keep the water from running up their legs; little boys, wearing grown men's berets, its colours faded from usage, the tender flesh peeking out of their shirts, filthy and shredded, came to dump the cart full of pebbles on the hill, in which the pyrites and wolframine straws gleamed in the sun.[2]

By choosing this place as the exhibition space – solitary, dormant, transparent – Bruno Cidra (Lisbon, 1982) reiterates his deep affinity with the memory of the mystique surrounding the handling of the metals he works with – in his expression, iron and bronze. Not only does the artist relate his sculptural practice, often alchemical and lingering, to the prolonged treatment that precedes the state of the final and absolute substance; he also proceeds, concomitantly, to a clear crossing between the architectural suggestion in his work and the architectural work in which the piece presents itself. Thus begins the true image of a building inhabiting a building, both suddenly invisible in their mutual complacency.

Herein lies the subtlety adjacent to the entire exhibition, this discovery of bodies and contours that is only possible in the tenuous mismatches that permeate the sculptural wandering and that allow, in a second instance, each moment of displacement to be unique.

Forged from paper and iron, the heavy stone is the upright evidence of its antithesis. Presented on the threshold of suspension, it does not simply cross the empty core of its own white skeleton, but it scours the slippery staircases at the ends of its plumb lines; the delicate restfulness of its doorways and lintels; the inevidence of its roofs and floors that place this work/device, sculpture/building before a visual organization that recalls, at a glance, the slenderness and elegance of a trellis emptied by the dryness of summer. The latent memory of the imagery alluding to popular Portuguese architecture presupposes what is also a transversal topic to sculpture and the matter of space – if you cut the roots that strongly tie it to the land and its problems, it loses its virtues: strength and authenticity [3]. Sensitive to the signs of the powerful inertia that holds back the sculptural objects that punctuate the exhibition space like soloists, the artist involves himself in an attentive and scrutinized choreography of filling, gravity, and juxtaposition – as if listening to the continuous rhythmic murmur that dictates the removal of what is close and the rapprochement of what is distant – between one body and another. With a mysterious materiality, where the sometimes greenish and sometimes bluish pigments glisten against the intermittence of the surrounding telluric light, these are sculptures in which a certain confluence between minimalist rigor and a modernist – or even déco – vitality formally unfolds in meandering internal secrets. These sculptures, opposed to the apparent ascension of the larger one that takes them in, do not hide their robustness in the face of the fine lines that welcome them, thus becoming heavy waters by designation. Though light as a sheet of paper, it is through their singular patine that their material body remains suggestively concealed, enhancing an existence divided between its unveiling glimpses of grace and, simultaneously, precariousness.

 The suggestion of a plot is unmistakable, but it comes from nowhere, so to speak, and goes nowhere [4]. The expanding sculptural presences, like figures dancing on the black floor of a botanical stage, present themselves in profile as essential lines to any of the positions and directions into which they lean, denoting the refinement of the physical and spiritual acuity of objects that are profoundly autonomous. Like an arrow that flies yet does not fly, immobile and fugitive, evident and inapprehensible, the exhibition intones a very rigorous study of contrasts, especially in terms of Cidra's authorial lexicon of spatial delineations – cuts that tear apart the plans of vision he creates; unlikely suspensions in the face of the plastic qualities of the objects he erects; heavy, fluid curves and swirls; and, above all, shapes that are always visually determined and that reconfigure the vertical and horizontal perception they draw, in all their elegance and brutality.

[1] A verse by Paul Celan in A Cerca do Tempo, Sete Rosas Mais Tarde. Lisbon: Edições Cotovia, 1993.

[2] Ribeiro, Aquilino, in Volfrâmio. Lisbon: Bertrand Editora, 2015.

[3] In Arquitetura Popular em Portugal, 3rd Edition. Lisbon: Ordem dos Arquitetos, 2004.

[4] Johnston, Jill, in Modern Dance, The New American Arts. New York: Horizon Press, 1965.

Canal Caveira: A Place Growing into a Road; a Road Turning into a Place.

by Jorge Catarino

Canal Caveira is a small town in Alentejo, with about 450 inhabitants, built along the national road 259/IC1. Until the late 1990s it was one of the places where to stop for lunch in the trip between Lisbon and Faro, and even became famous for its Cozido à Portuguesa. The construction of the A2 motorway, which connects Lisbon to the Algarve since 1998, diverted the traffic from Canal Caveira. The train station is currently deactivated, a factor that aggravates the town’s isolation: on Sundays Canal Caveira can only be accessed by private car or on foot. In spite of the cowardly threat of rain, decide to walk from Grândola to Canal Caveira, a sort of pilgrimage along the eight kilometres of the IC1 that separate the two places. I’ll try to hitchhike my way there.

The village was first settled in order to accommodate the workers of the nearby Caveira Mine. Ore extraction in the region, mainly pyrite, can be traced back to the period of the Roman occupation, but the modern exploration spanned between 1854 (the concession was granted in 1863) and 1963, the year the mine was deactivated. In the vicinity of the mine the soil is now completely sterile (it has been studied because of the total absence of vegetation), still contaminated with the residues of the mining operation more than 50 years after it was closed down.

My thumb slowly loses its shyness as follow along the IC1. Most drivers ignore me and the few that acknowledge my presence raise their hands apologetically, but don’t stop. One lady nods her disapproval. I feel my parents looking down on me. I’m wearing black, camouflaged against the asphalt road. It rings to me that blending with the road is not the most prudent choice when hitchhiking. Fortunately the camouflage is not perfect. Hugo from Beja is a brave enough traveller he can give a ride to a stranger. Some kilometres later, and some minutes farther away, he drops me in Canal Caveira.

Canal Caveira seems to have been spontaneously generated along the side of the road that points toward Faro. Its outer street, a parallel tributary to the main road en259–IC1, comprises an intermittent façade approximately 700 meters long. It is along this street we can find the restaurants, facing the road as if in some sort of heliotropism. Regardless of the threat of obsolescence, Canal Caveira has some reputation, which is enriched by the fascination for its remoteness. Recently, the economic crisis and a sharp increase of toll fares brought some traffic back to the National Road, and to Canal Caveira.

The restaurant is crammed and there is a line at the door, so have to wait for my turn. I’m finally led to a table where I sit next to three other men, from Porto and FCP fans (the city’s soccer team). They are all medical doctors, so they are quick to diagnose my enthusiasm for Benfica, a rival team. One of them turns out to have been a physician for the Fafe soccer team by the time Rui Costa played his first game as a professional athlete. He proposes a bet, two to one: if Benfica wins the championship, I lose 50 euros, if not, he pays me 100. I’d rather go poor, there’s more to life than money.

The Cozido is a procession of excesses, its glittering lustre of fat is a gluttonous festival of salivating glossy reflections. It is, nevertheless, a simple and unadorned meal, lush only in its generosity. Cabbage, turnip, beans, potato, carrot, chorizo, and farinheira transform the dish into an endurance test. Beef, chicken breast, pork bellies, pig’s ears and trotters: the cozido à portuguesa is not simply a meal, but also an anatomy lesson. From the plate to the stomach, the cozido makes its way on a road of wine. I bid farewell to my companions, who go on with their trip, and stay for some more hours in Canal Caveira. I walk for a bit until I see the sign marking the town’s limit. I turn right and discover the café “2 Irmãs” (two sisters), commonly known as Ticha.I go in and sit at the counter. After some brandies Ticha, the owner, explains to me that the town is named after the mine and the skulls they used to find there. Adding to the alliteration, there is a vanitas—from ruin to warning—that rings to the town’s name. A testament to the peculiar talent the Portuguese have for toponymy. I’m invited to the backyard of the café, where people play Chinquilho, a traditional Alentejano game. In the interval between two matches, they teach me the game and even try some shots. My lack of skill is too obvious: the metal disks lose all the agility they exhibited in the skilled hands of the other players, and crash awkwardly against the sand sprinkled concrete floor. Despite my poor performance, two plates of snails and some beers share with my teachers give me some comfort and prepare me for my return trip to Grândola.

Outside, the sun overwhelmed the clouds, fulfilling a kind of lazy dawn, a murmur that forebode the harshness of the summer sun in Alentejo. As soon as get out of the café, I’m approached by two police officers. They ask ifI have any illicit substances in my possession. say thatI don’t, but confess my intoxication, the result of an afternoon spent eating and drinking—harmless nonetheless. After they frisk me, free of charges, dare to ask: ‘Would you, Mr. Officers, by any chance be headed to Grândola?’ It was the most pleasant trip have ever made in the back seat of a police car.

Canal Caveira is an improbable place, true to the logic of cadavre exquis we discover in its name, composed by a pair of strange but oddly matching elements. It is a non-definitive place, somewhere where you are always on the way to: a place disintegrating into a road, a road slowing down into a place. Its vitality resides in its strangeness and ambiguity, in its atypical quality.