Presented at Lisboa Pessoa Hotel from June until September 2019, the exhibition «Any path leads everywhere» by the Portuguese artist Goulart proposes a pictorial interpretation of the city of Lisbon inspired by Fernando Pessoa‘s work and the urban landscape surrounding the Lisboa Pessoa Hotel, in the Lisbon area of Carmo.
Goulart’s city hides and displays the mystery of the pursuit of knowledge, while his artistic creation reveals the «continuous search for the essence of Lisbon in Pessoa» in an aesthetic reading that privileges metaphysics and a set of symbolic mirrors through colours, shapes and coherent codes throughout the ten wooden oil pieces that make up the exhibition.
The title of the exhibition is the first Pessoa poem of the year 1919 written a century before the paintings were made, in which the reflection on the being and the knowledge of human subjectivity is a central matter:
« Any path leads everywhere.
Any point is the centre of infinity.
Thus, whatever the art
of going or staying, of our body or spirit,
Everything is static and dead. Only the illusion
has past and future, and it is there where we stumble.
There is no road but in sensation
It is only through us that we walk.
[…]»
The artistic project of the exhibition genetically involves the Lisboa Pessoa Hotel, as each painting represents the view of Lisbon from the Carmo area, from the windows and terraces of the hotel dedicated to Lisbon, appearing in the same address where Pessoa printed the literary magazine Orpheu, which he founded. In Goulart’s words:
«From the multiple vertical axes emanating from the dimensions of the Lisboa Pessoa Hotel, a rediscovery of the urban landscape is proposed. From the heteronyms, from Orpheu and the windows – artefacts that allow us to observe and to be observed. A light that reveals, dazzles and blinds; that reveals and hides».
The mentioned symbolic dimension, which dialogues with Fernando Pessoa’s interest in esotericism, is worked by Goulart while imagining the Lisboa Pessoa Hotel as an analogy of the axis mundi, vertical axis, cosmological and metaphysical, through which all the paths of knowledge are spilled, which in turn lead to all that is sensationalist in Pessoa «feeling everything in every way».
Pessoa wrote in the above-mentioned poem of 1919,
«The path is of a wider scope
than the visible appearance of what is outside,»
Goulart’s comment on this verse, which complements his pictorial work, is: «Lisbon takes us everywhere, and this is a visible and possible path». A path that is developed by the exhibition pieces, in the rooms of the ground floor of Lisboa Pessoa Hotel as well as in Mensagem restaurant, on the 5th floor.
Each work has as a word for title, a verse or part of a verse from the quoted Pessoa´s poem. Hence, the exhibition aims to honour Lisbon and Pessoa, as well as Lisbon in Pessoa, as well as Pessoa in Lisbon, through a poetic, delicate and intimate look, which the cosmopolitan environment of the hotel values through this game of mirrors, of apparent paradoxes and syntheses, both hieratic and yearned.
Fabrizio Boscaglia
Goulart’s Exhibition “Any path leads everywhere” will be on permanent display at the Lisboa Pessoa Hotel (Ground floor) and at the MENSAGEM – Panoramic Restaurant and Bar (5th Floor) until September 19, 2019.
Free entrance. You only need to register your visit at the hotel reception.
Goulart, actually named Luis Miguel Goulart Bettencourt Moniz, was born in 1963 in Angra do Heroísmo. From a very early age Lisbon is his adopted city. Drawing and painting has been his hobby since 2012, when he learned the basic rules of drawing with Inês Mendes. Later on, he was a student of the painter Fátima Mateus. In 2014 and 2015 he studied drawing with the painter Susana Chasse. In 2016, he was a student of Luis Vieira Baptista and since 2017 attends Gabriel Garcia’s atelier with whom he has been developing new autonomous paths.