"Construções na Areia” by Cruzes + Vargas
27.01.2023 ------> 25.03.2023
“Constructions in the Sand" is a self-explanatory title, as literally the texture/material/structure trilogy is very strong. Construction materials are used, namely wooden structures, plasters, cements, varnishes, sand paints and wall paints. Creative, simple and carefree freedom is highly valued and put into practice, this childish and naturally expressive attitude of those who build in sand as a child is even structural. There are memory supports and professional factors, which are also fundamental for the achievement and evolution of the work of this duo of artists, namely Vargas being an architect in Kuwait, where he absorbs the culture and colours, and Cruzes having a background in painting, but also in communication design and technology. Both have deep memory ties with the Algarve culture and, although often “invisible”, structuring elements from the South are used, from its architecture, from its heat and, inevitably, from its Arab heritage. Before any interpretation, in the work of Cruzes + Vargas one feels intuition, the game of imagination and the pleasure of experimentation, the creative energy that is born from dialogue, polyphony and the path they make between ideas.
Ricardo Cruzes work portrays and illustrates tense, passionate, ironic, often autobiographical dialogues. States of soul that come to the world through the conversation between the artist and his work, where instituted reasons, social theories, existential questions and diverse missions are discussed. Landscapes and characters that balance on the line that separates the abstract from the figurative, move and transform from piece to piece, from narrative to narrative, are questions and answers, internal messages that materialize in finished and begun pieces in continuity. Dialogues where the two parties assume each other through the contrast of the formal approach, through being rational, enterprising and critical, as opposed to being primitive, expressive and childish. In an attitude of constant observation and questioning, the artist refuses to create in a single way, or use a single medium, worrying more about resolving, without objectively concluding, at each moment, the existential discussions he promotes with himself, experimentally excavating, with diverse tools, the chapters of an infinite novel.
Between the fascinating beauty of nature and total catastrophe, we find Cruzes.
Intensification of artistic activity since 2008 with public demonstrations from 2009. Resident artist at LAC - Laboratório de Atividades Criativas, in Lagos, where he has been working as a full-time artist since April 2021, is co-author of the project Cruzes + Vargas = 3 (Portugal <> Kuwait), with Rui Vargas and the Hyperactive Memory Ruins project (Portugal <> Norway), with Joel Arantes.
Is Rui Vargas an architect artist, or an artist architect? The question arises, as it is a complex, if not an impossible task, to identify in his work, both artistic and architectural, a barrier line between the two activities and it is in this aspect that lies the creative gear that makes him produce art and architecture in such a detached way. , looking for disparate inspirations, from architectural memories of his childhood, passing through the rational and interpreted appropriation of the masters he admires, finally snuggling up in the expressive, quick and direct simplicity that exists in children and in adults like Rui himself.
When making art, he uses design and planning, convenient to architectural processes, but as "painting" is intrinsic to his way of designing and planning, his artistic processes are art in themselves, invariably generating painted drawings of surprising formal richness, of unequivocal graphic straightforwardness and, therefore, aesthetically irreproachable.
Rui Vargas stops and thinks with the project, but it is with art that he breathes.
