Mário Caeiro | Urban apparitions: art in the city and the luminous aphorism

Wydział Malarstwa Uniwersytetu Artystycznego im. Magdaleny Abakanowicz w Poznaniu
ma zaszczyt zaprosić na wykład  Mário Caeiro:
Urban apparitions: art in the city and the luminous aphorism

The Faculty of Painting and Drawing of the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts Poznań is delighted to announce the lecture of Mário Caeiro:

Urban apparitions: art in the city and the luminous aphorism

The public reality of art is a societal asset and lies in the core of creative citizenship. Artists, curators, architects, planners, decision-makers and researchers are able to operate within this always-emerging cultural challenge only if a total rhetoric of sorts is made available, calling for the public to participate in a specifically interactive dimension of narrative. What might be the language of such endeavour? The apparition. 

While not dismissing the concept’s spiritual and religious undertones, my intention in this talk is to share a mesh of insights I accumulated for the last 20 years, in result of my meetings with artists and works that led me to generate a curatorial methodology and a weaponry of operative metaphors. The latest of which is precisely 'Theatre of Apparitions’.

In a dilettante approach of the urb(an) – urban code, urban fabric, urban image, urban form… – a cross-disciplinary projectuality shall become apparent, through the exploration of a range of creative tensions resulting from varied juxtapositions: text/literature/philosophy/rhetoric/architecture/space/curatorial/light. I shall share my passion for artists and works who play with materiality and contexts, places and expectations, as well as with words and atmospheres in a way that sets the stage for space-based transmutation. Urban encounters with wonderment.
Mário Caeiro

Mário Caeiro is a lecturer, a cultural programmer, a curator and a researcher in the field of urban culture and public art. He is the author of Arte da Cidade – História Contemporânea [Art in the City – Contemporary History], published in 2014. Active since 1995 as an independent curator interested in transdisciplinarity, rhetorics, public space and the city, his first best-known projects are Lisboa, Capital do Nada – Marvila 2001 [Lisbon, Capital of Nothing – Marvila 2001] (2001-2002), Luzboa – Bienal Internacional da Luz [Luzboa – International Biennale on the Theme of Light] (2004/2006) and Lightcraft Belmonte (three editions between 2015 and 2019).

Project VICENTE, a yearly urban culture initiative for Projecto Travessa da Ermida in Lisbon (eight editions between 2011 and 2019) and the Light Festival BELLA SKYWAY (Toruń, Poland), happening since 2009, are other aspects of his career, which alongside independent exhibitions and urban interventions extends to work in Graphic Design and as an editor.

In 2019, he curated the exhibition Vicente. The Myth in Lisbon (Museum of Lisbon – Pimenta Palace) which was accompagnied by the book Vicente. Símbolo de Lisboa. Mito Contemporâneo (Theya Editores).

PhD in Visual Arts and Intermedia by Universidade Politecnica de Valencia (Spain), with a thesis about the rhetorics of art in the city, Caeiro is a Communication Designer (ESBAL), also graduated in Comparative Literary Studies. Holds a Master in German Studies (FCSH-UNL) and a Post-Graduation in Urban Design (CPD/FBAUL/Universidade de Barcelona). Was awarded the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, in 2005. Teaching at ESAD.CR / Polytechnic of Leiria (Portugal) since 2004, he lives in Caldas da Rainha.

Mário Caeiro is a researcher at LIDA (Polytechnic of Leiria) and CECC (Catholic University of Portugal).

’The sealed studio’ talks

The lecture of Mário Caeiro is the sixth one from the series of talks initiated and moderated by Prof. Dominik Lejman, II Studio Painting course director organized by Faculty of Painting and Drawing, Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts Poznań, with support of Dr hab. Tomasz Kailitko, the dean of the Faculty of Painting and Drawing

The series of on-line lectures is dedicated to encounter with the critical thought of the most renowned contemporary theoreticians, art critics, curators and artists. At the time of the pandemic solitary confinement, we believe that with our effort, the forced physical distance can be reshaped into the advantage of the greater proximity in exchange of ideas.   

’The sealed studio’ talks

Wystąpienie Mário Caeiro jest szóstym z cyklu wykładów on-line inicjowanych i moderowanych przez Prof. Dominika Lejmana, kierownika II Pracowni Malarstwa zorganizowanych przez Wydział Malarstwa i Rysunku Uniwersytetu Artystycznego im Magdaleny Abakanowicz w Poznaniu pod opieką dziekana Wydziału Malarstwa dr hab. Tomasza Kalitki

Cykliczne wykłady on-line zadedykowane są przybliżeniu myśli krytycznej najbardziej znaczących, współczesnych teoretyków, krytyków sztuki, kuratorów i artystów. W czasie pandemicznego odosobnienia, wierzymy, że dzięki naszym wysiłkom wymuszony dystans fizyczny może przeistoczyć się w korzyść zbliżenia wymiany myśli.

Dominik Lejman 2021