Pedro Alfacinha
Lisboa
ANDRÉ PRÍNCIPE
ANTENA 2
November 20 – January 24
Opening reception: Thursday, November 20, 10pm
Galeria Pedro Alfacinha is pleased to announce Antena 2, by André Príncipe,
the artist’s first solo show in Lisbon since 2006.
Twice I had what they call a near death experience. Images from the last
three years came to me from all directions, as if a time gate had opened. The
first time was in 2012, living in a caravan and traveling around the country;
the second in 2013 in a kitchen in the center of Lisboa. Slowly, I came back to
reality. It was dark. On the radio, undisturbed, from its timeless trench,
Antena 2 was playing. Broadcasting to the entire galaxy.
André Príncipe
Rua de São Mamede, 25c, 1100-340 Lisboa +351 211 359 220 [email protected]
Pedro Alfacinha
Lisboa
Antena 2 is a selection of photographs bound by a state of animus and a
posture, one which possesses a tone that configures (poetically &&&)
part of the last three years of André Príncipe’s work. The vision which
finds itself orchestrated here is of the titular national public radio
station as a “trench”, one where, disposed of any autism and with a
deliberate partial forgetting, we can look to progress away from the
confinements in which we’re insistently tried to be put in. Be those in
the field of idealism (more or less rational), or of an independence that
comes to us almost in an already distorted manner, as it resembles
alienation, when projected in the unknown eyes of our fellow citizens.
In Príncipe’s own words, his is a way of photographing which is a daily
practice, discipline, method. The people, the animals and the places
live between the photograph-gesture that captures the divine of
everything which is free and that he finds a way to register, and the
inevitability of that which is mortal and ridiculous (the whole world),
from which results the necessary contrast in the portrayal of the truth
in all things, without which nothing can exist in dialogue with those who
are currently alive, and even less with eternity itself.
Antena 2 thus becomes a place in time, where orders which are
invariably condemned to fail are refused; the ones which try to take
from us what we are, our reality, our life, which is impossibly pathetic
and glorious. In a time, as in practically any other, in which those who
want to do their own thing in happiness have to endure with so much
crap, it becomes crucial for our survival that we defend what truly is
with everything we’ve got; that which is boisterous, wholly, by its nature
and for illumination. Antena 2 is in favor of this a raised fist, where an
infinite song of today’s Lisbon resides in.
Pedro Gomes
Rua de São Mamede, 25c, 1100-340 Lisboa +351 211 359 220 [email protected]
Pedro Alfacinha
Lisboa
André Príncipe (Porto, 1976) is a filmmaker, photographer and publisher. He
has published six books. Flamingo field without flamingos, his latest feature
film, premiered at Indie Lisboa 2013 and will be out in film theaters this
November. His work is featured in numerous private and institutional
collections.
Bibliography:
Tunnels
Booth-Clibborn, London, 2005
Master and Everyone
Pierre von Kleist, Lisboa, 2010
I thought you knew where all of the elephants lie down
Pierre von Kleist, Lisboa, 2010
O Perfume do Boi
Pierre von Kleist, Lisboa, 2012
Smell of Tiger Precedes Tiger
Pierre von Kleist, Lisboa, 2012
Tokyo Diaries [with Marco Martins]
Pierre von Kleist, Lisboa, 2014
Rua de São Mamede, 25c, 1100-340 Lisboa +351 211 359 220 [email protected]