Dubai-based gallery Carbon12 is hosting Portuguese artist Gil Heitor Cortesão's solo exhibition "Coming Home," which opened on the 10th of September.
“Coming Home” is a collection of paintings that are very significant to the artist, comprising of various experiences and moments in his life. Cortesão was born in 1967, when his city was going through an architectural change. Not long after, the plan was abandoned, leaving only traces of it behind.
In this exhibition, Cortesão's paintings rediscover those traces, using “found footage” from magazines and books from the 60s and 70s. In an interview in 2009, Cortesão said, “I am fascinated by those spaces because they are familiar to me in the sense that they still existed when I was a child, and yet I feel like they belong to the past. That which was probably futurist at that time, now seems retro-futurist or even just obsolete.”
Cortesão uses the technique “reverse glass painting”, where he paints oil paintings on Plexiglas. The painting process is the opposite of the more conventional canvas painting.
The artist has said of this process, “A ‘hygienic’ appearance, the occultation of the texture of the work and of the manual work through a transparent surface, a kind of translucent skin which also acts as a distancing element. Like the mirror of an automobile, it establishes an almost invisible limit, an illusory effect of tranquility, between the interior and the exterior.”
The exhibition’s title also refers to the long awaited second solo show of the artist in Dubai. “Coming Home” is in many ways a personal affair for the artist, and the viewer, the latter whom will get an intimate peek into the artists' memory.
Cortesão's artworks have been displayed in a number of prestigious public and private collections worldwide including MUDAM- Musée d'art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg MACE – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas, Portugal Foundation Calouste Gulbekian, and Lisbon Museu da Cidade, Lisbon.
"Coming Home" solo exhibition by Gil Heitor Cortesão will run until 1st of November 2012.
Carbon12 is located in Al Serkal Avenue, Warehouse D37, Al Quoz 1, Dubai. Opening hourse are Saturday – Thursday from 11:30am – 7:00pm.
