Mariano Navarro, “Reason of the gaze”

For this exhibition in the Casa da Cerca, Branca e neutra claridade [White and Neutral Clarity], Calapez has decided to start chronologically at the end of the last century, with the series Desenhos contínuos [Continuous Drawings], from 1999. Five large-scale drawings in dry pastel on paper, which depict a sort of forest, a wood synthesised in a ballet of lines drawn out by the method of holding two sticks of pastel in the same hand. The density of the uniform black colour of the background, beyond the nocturnal, added to the different intensities emanating from the white of the pastel according to the strength with which it has been applied makes these lines – that seminal foundation of the drawing – undulate and vibrate at the same time. Indeed, they form a single view, as the lines that complete the… (read the full article)