Oficina Impossível

One never forgets a first time. Whether it is a disaster we wish we could erase forever from the records of memory, or whether it is perfect, immaculate, and therefore something to preserve on the altar of everything we take pride in throughout life, the first time inevitably carries the unique intensity of the debut, of impulse, of the inaugural, of the beginning. A first time is always a milestone. It carries the dimension of something decisive and historical. It is also always the sign of a sequence — the first of other times, of many, of a series that extends and multiplies into a future that has not yet happened because, after all, we are still living the first time. In fact, when one is living a first time, when a first time begins, one never knows that it will be the first. It may turn out to be the only one, remaining in that exceptional, unrepeatable, isolated singularity. But it may also become the first of many, giving rise to multiples of itself and repeating indefinitely. Only in the future, looking back, does the first time recognise itself as such. The first time therefore has this paradoxical character. On the one hand, through a certain frenzy of being an unknown, through the promise it carries of a series yet to come, it presents itself as a bombastic potentiality of the future (without any guarantee of its fulfilment). On the other hand, the first time has a power autonomous from time itself: it stands on its own, it offers itself and is lived as a free instant, detached from time, and will always remain the first time, regardless of what may (or may not) unfold from it. Today is the first time of a new project: the Gallery of the Oficina Impossível! Continuing a previous project, a new gallery opens today in Lisbon, intended as a space for creation and sharing. It is founded on two premises: first, that thought is a creative act; second, that art is the result of a gesture of emancipation. The Gallery of the Oficina Impossível thus manifests itself as an informal philosophical and artistic space because it is non‑elitist, transversal because it brings together difference, horizontal and rhizomatic because it maintains simple and accessible contact with the public. The Gallery of the Oficina Impossível seeks to risk the crossing of artists and artisans and to develop philosophical work through direct contact between Philosophy and diverse artistic forms and techniques. Through the workspaces it provides, the Gallery affirms itself as a “living gallery, with artworks still warm, freshly made in the studios of its resident artists.”

For its inauguration, the Gallery of the Oficina Impossível invited a collective of artists and artisans who, over the past year, have gradually approached the project. A heterogeneous collective, composed of artists and artisans with very diverse paths and works, who share only one common point: converging in the same space, the Oficina Impossível. Many of them would probably never have crossed paths if not for the Oficina Impossível, because this collective does not have a common manifesto or founding impulse. It is a collective born of pure and simple chance. There is no theoretical or artistic necessity that justifies its existence — except, precisely, the beauty of their encounter at the Oficina Impossível. We may therefore say that the only aesthetic affinity uniting this collective takes the form of a chance encounter. Its slogan could be: “Impossible Collective, where the only aesthetic affinity takes the form of mere chance.” And here we see how, from the impossible, the most improbable can occur: the encounter. For the encounter is the happy result of two converging components — time and space. There is a mathematics of encounter, for two bodies must be in the same place at the same time. And this encounter reveals how there is a creative providence of the impossible that makes things happen, that constructs the conditions of possibility for the encounter, that provokes and summons it. Indeed, the Oficina Impossível makes the strangest things happen — improbable encounters, eccentric coincidences! One day we may even celebrate weddings!

Faced with the formation of such an improbable collective, yet one that now presents its work so consistently, we may think that, after all, the simple fact that they met and recognise themselves in this collective means a great deal about a necessary intersection, both artistic and theoretical. We are led to think that, in truth, in a second look at this fortuitous encounter of a group of artists, it was not chance that brought them together. That something immanent to each of them made them come to the Oficina Impossível and want to participate in this collective that now asserts itself for the first time. As if some force greater than themselves were at work at the same moment, making them converge in the same space. Why did such different artists and artisans meet at the Oficina Impossível? Is there some plane of immanence of which these artists and artisans are expressions? It is tempting to risk the delightful hypothesis that it might have been the effect of a game of the gods, who so enjoy challenging humans. It could be. But, challenging the gods, we suggest another answer: only time will tell whether the encounter was the fruit of chance alone. Because, after all, this is only the first time, and therefore, at this very moment, neither we nor the gods know whether it will ever repeat itself and form multiples of itself in an ad infinitum series. Meanwhile, let us invite the gods and celebrate the beauty of mere chance, the power of the accidental, the potency of the unknown, and the marvellous world of time! The works presented today at the Gallery of the Oficina Impossível express well the heterogeneous and improbable character of this collective.

Air_billy’s works summon the simplicity of the line. They affirm the traditions of knitting and embroidery, reinvented in the light of the present, and invite the rediscovery and experimentation of these ancestral techniques. This root of embroidery is also present in the emphasis on the embroiderers’ hands as a perspective on Lisbon, and in the play of colour combined with the taste for line that functions like a dotted pattern in the illustration.

Black Mendes constructs sculptural forms without coordinates that make us lose the notion of identity or, more radically, of reality. A figure without any record. An identification yet to be invented, like an animal from the “Chinese encyclopedia” classification mentioned by Jorge Luis Borges: “a) belonging to the Emperor; b) embalmed; c) trained; d) suckling pigs; e) mermaids; f) fabulous; g) stray dogs; h) included in this classification; i) that tremble as if mad; j) innumerable; k) drawn with a very fine camel‑hair brush; l) etcetera; m) that have just broken the vase; n) that, from afar, look like flies.”

Clo Bourgard’s pieces reveal the direct, transparent and rapid relationship the artist has with a joyful and spontaneous dimension of expression. A pop universe, full of colour and plasticity, yet always marked by a strong political dimension. Simple materials, strong colours, complex messages. Clo Bourgard’s work could be described as: “The exuberance of a political‑pop manifesto.”

David Reis Pinto transports us into the violent, raw interior of the process of dissolving forms, colours, textures and, almost, the canvas itself. We might call it abstractionism, and yet the force of the gesture of decomposition is so strong that it appears as a whole and powerful body — a figuration of dissolution, beyond norms and isms. Everything seems suspended, melted, submerged, dissolved in dissolution itself.

Dedo Mau explores the drawing of metamorphosis. His work consists in recognising the line as the boundary of bodies and as a zone of indiscernibility between them. Twisted, dismembered, bent, mixed, fused, folded, crossed figures — a profusion of bodily contortions, singular or multiple, that lose themselves in the line that attempts to define them. All the affect in a single line!

Jacky Cavallari: the mastery of gesture, the beauty of nature in its abundance — not only in theme but in material. Jacky’s relationship with Nature, whether in flora and fauna or in wood, is one of absolute intimacy. The inlay technique is so exquisite, the figures so expressive, the use of different woods so precise, appropriate and rich, that we understand that what happens between Jacky‑the‑artisan and the animals he creates is a process of symbiosis, of absolute becoming. If we listen closely, we hear the animal sounds, like characters from a Jacky fable.

Joana Pimenta Oliveira offers us the capture of an event — but an event greater than life. We are in the realm of multiple dimensions, layers upon layers. The figure in disappearance, captured in its moment of escape. We are spectators of an event that surpasses us. Traces of a minor escape.

There is an entire dramaturgy in the work of Lourenço Lomelino. The characters appear condensed in a plot stronger than themselves. There is a brilliance of fiction itself, and the characters are there to make it happen. Its theatrical, almost pantomimic dimension evokes the Italian theatre of the commedia dell’arte. Through the use of various techniques and overlays, strange phrases and elements echo, leading us to philosophical worlds, like a backdrop behind the curtain.

Patrícia Mesquita: the line, the hand that responds to the profusion of colours, forms and entities emerging from an almost hallucinatory creative process. Her works range from pure abstraction to radical concretism. Lines and strokes, colourful sketches that refer only to the neutral space they occupy, contrast with explicit, exaggerated, even exacerbated purple cabbages. Patrícia’s work is an installation in itself — performative, experimental, reinventing itself with each frame, each possibility of visualisation. Plastic work in the absolute sense of the term.

Rita Dias’s illustrations lead us into an intimate, warm atmosphere, almost tangible in scent and temperature. Like cinematic scenes, they invite us to witness something happening in the dream of some unknown mind. And if we are not attentive, we become the ones caught in the act of confabulation, fully immersed in the artist’s universe, entangled in a half‑lit scenario, characters blending with the dreamlike landscape.

Rolando Marcolini Jr allows us to experience, poetically and almost playfully, the limits of the human — that delicate frontier of the human mediated by technology. In this confrontation, his digital drawings make us reflect on the limits of painting and drawing. Pixels replace acrylics, watercolours or oils. The computer mouse replaces the brush or pen. The screen replaces the canvas. But there is a limit within this limit: the computer does not replace the artist. Despite technological advances, it is the artist who dominates and manipulates technology, bringing forth a digital artwork printed in inkjet, in deliberate contrast with the delicate texture of a matte, heavy‑weight paper that almost resembles drawing, photography or watercolour.

With Zandlou’s work, we face the transposed image — “a poetic, ethereal moment printed on hard, inflexible matter.” Snippets of ordinary scenes, subjects of any everyday life, inhabiting their own world, are swiftly and mercilessly transferred into a new reality and material that transform them into a concentrate of truth and illusion. Transposition is not merely moving an image from one place to another, nor simply applying it to a specific material. The transposition of the image onto wood alters the very nature of the scene, the context, the characters. It could be a photographic image simply printed on wood — but it is not. The process of applying it to wood completely changes the situation and its interpreters. The very process of transposition modifies the nature of the transposed image, as if discovering a new theme.

It is with this journey through such diverse works that we inaugurate the Gallery of the Oficina Impossível. And about this collective that shows its work for the first time in the Gallery of the Oficina Impossível, I return to the final scene of Casablanca, that mythical film about impossible love, and quote Bogart to say: “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Catarina Pombo Nabais