Travessia is an exhibition that presents a set of five sculptures by the artist Rui Chafes, designed and presented for Casa das Artes de Tavira, which was conceived in collaboration with Galeria Filomena Soares.

Travessia [Crossing]. Word that evokes the traversing of a crossing path, perhaps to another bank, in this Casa das Artes so close to the Gilão river, which bathes the city of Tavira.

Crossing through a space, where Nothing is here (title of one of the works) and where an Infinite past (idem) has already been overcome, perhaps no longer remembered, as it is no longer seen either.

But also a passage of time, in the gallery’s largest room, which has thirty-six years of existence and this time, from August 7 to 20, five sculptures by an artist who is so important to contemporary art, but whose works are always based on a distant and mythical past.

And always a passage to another reality, one that the spectator understands and gives meaning and existence.

There is a verticality present in all five suspended pieces, not touching the ground, and a sense of grandeur at the same time, as if elevating the works to another plane, as a way to reach the transcendent.

There is the idea of ​​interior and exterior, the latter being smooth and polished and the first rough and rough, in the sculpture Unshelter I, which shows precisely these two sides of the work, for the sculptor similar to the two sides of a human being.

All the works are somber, showing strange and uncomfortable objects, sometimes sharp and dangerous. They are very intense works, as if the artist took something from his entrails and shared it with us in this joint journey.

In this way, the material and the artist’s action on that same material are presented, giving it life, in pieces through which people recognize themselves and recognize meanings, made of iron, in an always coherent aesthetic that is already so familiar to us.

Travessia is on view at Casa das Artes de Tavira, in Algarve, until August 20.