TIAGO MESTRE

The exhibition consists of a large site-specific installation, with different ceramic sculptural sets occupying the gallery’s entire exhibition space. The artist starts from a reflection on the tradition of Portuguese ceramics, with particular attention to the long tradition of pottery in the Alentejo, where he was born and raised, proposing a reworking that puts historical, social, and cultural aspects of the objects into perspective.

In the exhibition, Mestre focuses on objects that are no longer in a stable condition, presenting themselves as vestiges of a cycle interrupted in time. A steel construction beam crosses the exhibition space and acts as an axis around which different ceramic sculptures are organised, based on utilitarian pieces from Portugal’s popular pottery universe. The typologies presented by the artist are inspired by a vast repertoire of popular utilitarian elements, such as pitchers, jugs, jars, amphorae, bowls, cups, and mugs, associated with the old spaces for socializing and consuming alcohol and tobacco, such as the tasca, the cellar, and the shop. However, Mestre interferes with the original shapes of these elements, creating deformations that recall the condition of drunkenness caused by the consumption of the substances that these utensils usually contain. This intervention displaces these objects from their everyday and utilitarian context into the universe of contemporary art, while at the same time marking out indications of their use at a certain time and place.

In conjunction with this set of works, the exhibition also features pipe sculptures that are reminiscent of the white ceramic pipes produced in London between the mid-16th and 19th centuries, which are still in use today and have spread to other urban centers in Europe. Mestre’s pipes, on the other hand, have a sinuous, contorted configuration, which refers to the volatile nature of the smoke itself. The smoke is also present in the exhibition, in a configuration that is no longer atmospheric, but rocky, almost like a fossil element. ‘If, through closer observation, one should realize that this set of artworks does not constitute a landscape, the sensation, however, remains of a cave and of prehistory,’ comments Stigger in her text for the exhibition.