UNTITLED

It is always good to seean exhibition project being born that isn’t ruled by market necessities andallows itself to be somewhat laboratorial. In terms of its program, this is oneof Ar Sólido’s premises, confirmed by their two first exhibitions, at least fornow. In a big enough neutral warehouse space, two interventions are shown, andeven though they are not complementary, they establish a dialogue with oneanother. Bolota’s sculptural production, which frequently takes on whatconventionally is called “site-specific”, possesses more power of interactionwhen it’s set in a place not immediately artistic, whose perception isreconfigured. In this space, close to a “white cube”, the artist shows a piece thatis magnetic enough so that fact can be circumvented or limited to issues ofscale. “Untitled” is an enormous wooden structure filled with sand, apparentlylinear if seen from one side and with openings if seen from the opposite side.There is something fortress-like about it that exudes a minimal sensibility atthe same time that evokes something primeval, simultaneously solid and denude. MarcoPires presents two groups of works morphologically distinct but that belong tothe same body of work, and that show how geography but also cartography arefrequently assimilated by cultural mythologies. First, we find black and whitephotographs of the Joshua Tree desert that remind the viewer of the rockylandscapes that frame westerns. In another series, using mixed media, sectionsof the atlas of the United States territory are associated with graphitedrawing additions, confronting the cartographic fixation with a subjectiveelement that leaves it undefined.  

CelsoMartins
in Revista E, April 3rd 2015, newspaperExpresso, p. 87.