Memories, those, do not run flee. One day they come to meet us and bring with them an impetus to happen again. The folding of time. A mutual relationship occurs built by guiding lines that point to paths that had not yet been illuminated. It is this light, the passing of time, that emanates from the works of Pedro Chorão in his most recent exhibition Diálogos Sensíveis, at Galeria Sá da Costa, in Lisbon.

Nine works are presented as a kind of painting-entity that holds, in their hands, the drumstick that marks the step that leads to the unknown and that provides clues about what they want to tell us. Are they fights, tantrums, screams, shouts, whispers, laughter, songs…? The sensitive aspect of the dialogue lies precisely in all these vibrations that Pedro Chorão experienced and by which he allowed himself to be experienced, invested in not knowing what lies in the distance, only knowing the here and now. Not knowing where to go and to look, not knowing what to say or being left without an answer to what the composition utters, are the problems sought by the artist, with the perpetual ambition of knowing them, recognizing them and, above all, solving them. For Pedro Chorão, it is above all intense intimacy and obsession, it is a reason for being as concrete and defined as anything else^[1].

The fabric of reality has long since merged with the reverse side of the canvases — going back to the practice of painting on the back of the paintings that the artist had between 1980 and 1990 — and with the colors oscillating between warm, cold and earthy. It flows between the transparencies of the veils and the opacities of the planes, what “appears” ^[2] — in anachronistic gestures of the timeline itself that, in fact, has a life of its own, the transtemporal gesture of Pedro Chorão —, whether shadow animals that balance or unbalance the anamnesis, with Bicho 7, for example, or even landscapes painted with the affection of youth stories, with Vista da Serra da Estrela nos anos 50.

It is in these conversation-processes that the lines that make up the orthogonal structures that support Pedro Chorão’s work are outlined, which here suggest, in the layers of acrylic paint, a certain infinity. There it is, the memory that never ends, that never goes away for good! If we will it, infinity is a straight line, whether horizontal or vertical. It is the one that opens the choreography between parallel universes, that presents us with the constant line of the horizon, morning, afternoon or night — at the beginning, in the middle or at the end —, among us and what we were, what we will become. After all, before an image (work diante de uma imagem, in this case) we are before time (estamos diante do tempo^[3]) and Huberman was always right.

It is up to us to let ourselves be carried away by the winds that break through the gallery windows, which will eventually bring us the first gesture, the first word and the first look of our relationship with the material of the legend of time. Pedro Chorão makes us understand, in a very concrete way, that the line between our existence and the secrets of the other side, whatever it may be, is very thin. It is not an abyss, but a passage that requires our gesture, the expansion of our body’s field of action. Then, it will become curiosity, it will become a flow of energy that will make the finiteness of our gaze grow.

In the end, whatever happens… will happen.

Diálogos Sensíveis, by Pedro Chorão, will be on display at Galeria Sá da Costa until May 24th.

^[1] de Pedra Filosofal, de António Gedeão.

^[2] Segundo o artista, na entrevista a José Sousa Machado que acompanha o catálogo da exposição e, em parte, a folha de sala.

^[3] Didi-Huberman, G. (2017). Diante do Tempo, pp. 1.