Cronografias de Torres

Starting from the theme of the Lines of Torres Vedras yesterday and today, this exhibition presents not only the Lines of Torres Vedras, but also the Lines of (Vasco) Torres, the lines on which the artistic work of this painter, who has adopted the city of Torres Vedras as his home for many years, is based.

As the exhibition title suggests, the images presented are chronographies – written and/or visual narratives according to the order of events; chronicles; graphic records of time intervals during an observation (as can be seen in any dictionary). This concept is adapted to the visual arts and revisited in the curatorship of an exhibition whose works present a cross-referencing of references from yesterday and today on a territorial and strategic landmark – the Lines of Torres Vedras – which was absolutely decisive in the unfolding of historical events integrated into the Peninsular War of the early 19th century, which even today, more than two hundred years later, continue to be recounted and celebrated.

Vasco Torres thus invites us to take a fresh look at History and the stories behind History, sometimes (re)visiting it, sometimes, conversely, bringing the Lines of Torres from the shadows of the past into the (more or less diffuse) light of contemporaneity, through a symbiosis of records reminiscent of various artistic currents, from expressionism to conceptual art or dadaism, also passing through an apparent influence of other disciplines of visual arts, such as photography and graphic design. Within the scope of these choices, characteristic of the painter's artistic identity, the reinvention, recontextualization and subversion of cut-out images, words, phrases and symbols intervene, combined in his "documentary-collages". These elements are combined here in an original way, acquiring new meanings, sometimes with a certain dose of humor and irreverence, and with the monochromatic and sober tones of black and white being enveloped and revived by expressive splashes of color, in which blue and red predominate – in three phases, the colors of France, the colors of the United Kingdom, and the colors of Torres Vedras.

These visual chronographies showcase historical figures who played a leading role in the events related to the Lines of Torres Vedras, as well as the actors who portrayed them in the film "Lines of Wellington," in an interesting bridge between past and present that almost makes it seem that in these rectangles of color and non-color, of light and shadow, of line and stain, the painting and the assemblage of graphic records in these "documentary-collages" are transformed into another dimension, where spaces and times become confused, where pieces of History(ies) and contemporaneity(ies) touch, and where those characters look at us and want to be looked at.