Rui Soares Costa - Visual Artist - Exhibitions - 2022 - anthropocene & great acceleration

October 29, 2022 - January 29, 2023

Capuchos convent

Almada, PT

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ANTHROPOCENE & GREAT ACCELERATION

In his work, Rui Soares Costa has been reflecting on the idea of time, or rather on the idea of the perception of time. We perceive time as a continuous succession of separate events. However, this linear vision of time is an illusion, and, as such, it can be manipulated, distorted, accelerated or decelerated. This malleability of the idea of time has been widely explored by artists over the centuries, but in contem- porary times it has gained particular prominence because time has come to be used as a tool and material for the con- struction of works.

This is the case with the work of Rui Soares Costa. Time is an essential element in his works since his first body of work Sweet series in which the materials used for the cre- ation of the works - wood and sugar - were transformed with the passage of time, without control of the artist’s hand. Time, as in almost everything it touches, also transforms it- self into a sculptor.

In the series presented in this exhibition, the action of time also takes on an artistic and creative dimension. It is an active agent in the making of the works, as are the tides and the water of the Tagus River, in the case of Rising (2020 - to the present), or the weather conditions in Casa do Ar (2022).

Issues related to the consequences of human action on the various systems of the planet have long been the subject of Rui Soares Costa’s work, but it is in Rising that the artist focuses on the rise in sea level.

In a recent article in National Geographic online, Chris- tina Nunez stated that “as humans continue to dump green- house gases into the atmosphere, the oceans are mitigating the effects. The world’s oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the heat from these gases, but this is affecting our seas - and 2021 has set a new record for ocean warming. Sea level rise is one of the effects of climate change. The average sea level has risen by about 23 centimetres since 1880, with about 7.5 of those centimetres rising in the last 25 years. Every year, the sea rises another 3.2 millimetres. New research, published on February 15, 2022, shows that sea level rise is accelerating and it is estimated that it could rise 30 centimetres by 2050.” It is in the Anthropocene, this geological era centred on man and his action on the planet, that this great acceleration takes place.

Rising is born from the desire to make this change in the rise of the tides visible. Soares Costa positions different ob- jects, first steel plates, then metal totems and papers, stra- tegically on the quay of Olho de Boi. They remain there for days, months or even years. The intervention of the river wa- ters, the oscillation of the tides, transform these objects, as a painter would do on a white canvas. Sometimes the draw- ing made by the waters is light, almost undetectable, other times it is so deep that it totally transforms the surface of the different materials.

In the different works in this exhibition, the hand of the artist is replaced by the hand of nature. A creative and poetic partnership and dialogue that tells us how only together we can transform the future of our coexistence and of this planet.

Filipa Oliveira

Outubro 2022