Pedro Calapez

GYMNASIUM (diário íntimo)

Pedro Calapez (Portugal)

“I imagined a large room. Here, the drawings – which wouldn’t leave my head and later met in my hands – find their place: some in front of others, some beside others. Here they occupy the space, revealing the daily rewriting of little histories. These drawings thus emerge in the place of exercise, the place of movements and gestures, the structure of thought. The gymnasium, in ancient Greece, existed for the practice of public games but also served as a place of productive social engagement. The athletes competed in the nude, a practice that promoted aesthetic enjoyment. It is a public game that I trace here, a game that depends upon the gaze of the other, on his movement, on the possible routes of the drawings in the fitness room. These are “nudes,” despite being hidden in their artifice: affirming that which they are, black lines on a plain background the color of aluminum. In their plot to reveal images, the lines fold and curl into themselves, creating labyrinthine paths in which one seeks a beginning without end, an unlimited principle, the rawness of the lines recalling all of the colors that could fill them. They are circular thoughts that train our gaze.”

Pedro Calapez, February 2012