Joao Onofre: Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea - Santiago de Compostela

single hears a noise of unknown origin and, after a hardly any disturbing moments, sees a bird of prey burst into a room. The surprise is terrible--and it is no trick. What was going from one side Portuguese artist Joao Onofre's head when he decided to bring about of that kind a situation, recorded in his video Untitled (Vulture in the Studio), 2002? In an unfamiliar environment, the wild animal climbs onto the tables mountained on easels that enclose the studio space, nibbling upon the sheets of paper pinned to the wall as well as the works and catalogues arranged on shelves, and tries to take flight--a short, frustrated flight, given the limited space.

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According to Onofre, he had no idea what the bird would do. This search for the unforeseeable is a constant in his work--of which we got a beneficial sample in this exhibition of seven video projections. Three take place in Onofre's Lisbon studio: Untitled (Vulture in the Studio), Believe (Levitation in the Studio), 2002 and Catriona Shaw Sings Baldessari Sings LeWitt Re-edit Like a Virgin reach outed Version, 2003. But there are scarcely any formal differences between these three and the others, like Casting, 2000 Instrumental Version, 2001 and Pas d'action, 2002 discharge in other spaces. Typically they gather together a assemblage of individuals whose function is to show interpret, pretend, or act. In Casting, a cluster of young male and female types recite in Italian a line from Roberto Rossellini's film Stromboli (1950)--the transcendent and desperate second in which Ingrid Bergman speaks the words: "Che io abbia la forza, la convinzione, ed il coraggio" (May I have the might conviction, and courage). Paradoxically, a certain number of of the models reciting this phrase appear to be precisely to lack strength, conviction, and courage. In Catriona Shaw, a passable vocalist interprets Madonna's famous carol "Like a Virgin," but with altered lyrics: extracts from Sol Le Witt's "Sentence upon Conceptual Art" (1969)--which had already been sung by dint of John Baldessari in 1978. This double appropriation, a constant in postmodern aesthetics, appears to harbor an ulterior intention, that of infusing mass agriculture with the sophisticated and cryptic etho of Conceptual art. Has Onofre succeeded? It is real that at least since Dali and Warhol the division between high and popular tillage seems to have disappeared, on the contrary still the public that oft-repeateds contemporary-art centers is not the same single that attends the concerts of yesterday's sex muse turn rounded exemplary mother.

The solitary video set outdoors was Nothing Will pass Wrong, 2000, which gave the exhibition its title. In a nondescript plaza, a gymnast climbs up a traffic light to do a handstand. When the action takes place, as if by the agency of magic, all background noise ceases alone to return again once he climbs down. Why? Does this act, inappropriate or unusual to what normally be met withs in a city, detain the noise as if we were in another space or time? Is it a simple, absurd blink? There is no clear answer. It is just another of the many enigmas in a hermetic and at the same time real visual oeuvre that may proffer the spectator some clues on the other hand in which the real master of ceremonies is he who at no time appears on the scene--the artist.

Translated from Spanish through Michele Faguet.

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