The Behaviour of Being portrays the search for a new kind of artistic environment and the processes that take place within this environment once it have been attained. “This project was a way to confront myself with nature and art. A group of young artists in Lagoa Velha, an idilic place in Castro Marim, Algarve, inspired me. It was interesting to see how that place affected practice, and practice affected that place as well as our state of being. All the prime-matter was there, it was just a matter of looking, feeling and conceptualising it,” says Pauliana Valente Pimentel. This project was successfully launched for the first time in September 2015 at COB Gallery in London.
A place for contemplation
A recurrent topic in artistic communities is how to find affordable work spaces that inspire, open up the creative process and foster collaborations. Nowadays these places have become more rare. During this residency these artists ranging from performance, sculpture, painting to visual arts and poetic studies, took each other on a journey back to nature. A collective project in which they stimulated each other in their individual creative process. It shows the need of stronger local communities, silence and contemplation in order to reawaken lost consciousness. Could the land of the Algarve be the sacred and idyllic place for artistic development?
“Pauliana Valente Pimentel, who received this year an SPA – Authors Award 2015, in the category “Best Photographic Work” and has been represented by the Gallery of Salgadeiras since 2011, presents «The behaviour of being», her second solo exhibition at the gallery. «The behaviour of being» portrays an artistic production environment, apart from large urban center, reflecting on some of the challenges currently being placing the contemporary art practice, and the need of silence and a certain stillness, the demand for contemplation of places, community development, and the returning to our origins as a society. Could the land of the Algarve be the sacred and idyllic place for artistic development?
From this art scene, Pauliana Valente Pimentel creates her own narrative where the protagonists are the artists and the landscape, in a personal and architectural record that extends beyond the document, yielding photographs that reflect their own conception of the artistic process, her and that of others. Paintbrushes to wood carving, from poetry to performance, guessing, through photography, what each pause or moment of introspection may have triggered these artists as well the influence of the Algarve in the construction of artistic objects. An environment full of creative energy, of great stillness and outdoor serenity, important for the creative process and to emerge from this “being” that artists both seek in their work. As regards King Headswim, one of the artists who participated in this project: “And the magician is lost in a world of / Palm readers / So dance Beekeepers dance Because your honey / Our honey / Is the only magic left in the world.”
«The behaviour of being» results from the residence Pauliana Valente Pimentel participated in June 2015 in the Algarve, along with other 12 international artists, one organisation of “The Beekeepers” and “The Cob gallery1. After «The Passenger», a train ride with various European artists, «Youth of Athens» which brings us the look of the Greek youth struggling with Democracy, Pauliana Valente Pimentel returns with «The behaviour of being» another vision of Youth, a theme which she has celebrated throughout her artistic career.”
Ana Matos
January 2016