JORGE MOLDER

As Karim Ghaddab explains in his essay for the exhibition catalogue, “The two series of photographs on display feature images—subtly reworked—taken from two films: Robert Wiene’s *The Cabinet of Dr Caligari* (1920) and Victor Fleming’s *The Wizard of Oz* (1939) .../... By extracting still images from these films, Molder halts the spinning cycle of the film reel and the unfolding of the narrative; he brings the image to a standstill, or even to a complete halt; it is treated as a fugitive whom the artist trips up. The sequence of frames that creates the illusion of movement is interrupted, returning to the stillness of static images. The film is as if paralysed. Cesare’s haunted gaze—which caught Molder’s eye—is reversible: he is as much an actor (on the viewer) as he is a victim (of Caligari’s hypnotic hold). There is, in Molder’s work, an urgency of stillness. The images of Cesare and Dorothy sketch a portrait of a strange couple that is both fascinating and unsettling. Everything pushes them apart, yet they draw closer nonetheless. Cesare is objectified to the point of being exhibited in a fair by Caligari, whilst the young Dorothy commands the world and plays with reality at her own whim .../... If sleep is a mask (as demonstrated by Cesare’s make-up and facial expressions) and dreams are a theatre (as exemplified by Dorothy’s fantastical journey), then the connection is clear with Jorge Molder’s entire body of work, in which the motifs of the mask, play, the mirror and multiple identities recur.”

Jorge Molder, born in 1947, lives and works in Lisbon. For several decades, he has been exploring a strange and singular photographic research through self-representation or sometimes mixed with cinematographic situations, a research on being and its ambiguities, on time. His works are featured in numerous museums in Portugal and in international collections. He represented Portugal at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999. He received the EDP Foundation Grand Prize in 2010 and the AICA/Portugal Prize/Art in 2014. A retrospective of his work will take place this spring at the Museum of Modern Art in Guimarães.