The exhibition "Transmutações Generativas" (Generative Transmutations) was on show at Galeria Municipal Trem, in Faro, from 2 February to 14 April 2018 (extended date). It presented the latest (most recent and final) versions of the ALCHIMIA and OMMANDALA artefacts.
Exhibition text
Text by Mirian Tavares. English translation under the responsibility of Pedro Alves da Veiga.
In 1935, the poet and essayist Paul Valéry published a text he called "Notion générale de l'art". In it, he tries to answer a question that had become pressing at a time when the historical avant-gardes had already dissipated, but whose contributions continued to flourish and to unsettle a universe which, at least until the 19th century, conformed to the canon established very early in the West. People knew very well what art was until the world encountered new technologies of image production, such as photography and cinema, and the deconstruction of the very notion of the art object brought about by the nihilistic gesture of Dadaism. More than a century after the appearance of both the new technologies and the first avant-garde movements, the question Valéry tries to answer remains pertinent and often unanswered – or at least without a single answer able to satisfy everyone. Above all after the arrival of computational technologies, which were quickly absorbed by artists of many kinds who appropriated the machinic universe, inverting its original, utilitarian meaning and making the machine "useless", that is, turning it, in Valéry's terms, into an art object: "Le caractère le plus manifeste d'une œuvre d'art peut se nommer inutilité (…)". The French poet thus follows one of the principles put forward by the philosopher Immanuel Kant who, as early as the 18th century, defended the uselessness of Art as one of its fundamental characteristics. Now, to speak of uselessness, in either case, is by no means to devalue Art itself; on the contrary, it is to establish a distinction between objects within a world of objects with very different characteristics and purposes. In this sense, I believe that art, in the computational/machinic universe, can only claim this status – to be art – if it breaks with the idea surrounding that universe, namely its insertion into the market, into industry, into the economic and business fabric, in short, into the world of objects with well-defined purposes, and prices. Art can thus be conceived as a gesture of deep rupture with the mechanism of making with a view to something. Art is a creative gesture sufficient unto itself and, as such, one that recreates and reinvents itself at any moment in History, unconcerned with tools or medium, but with its essence of being useless.
The work of Pedro Alves da Veiga that we see in this exhibition is the fruit of research – or rather, of a constant restlessness on the part of its author – who seeks, through technology, to develop objects that dialogue with the public, but also with the prevailing notion of art within a system of exhibition and consumption, of uses and of reflection. Among the many possibilities of digital creation, the artist chooses generative art, in itself an infinite process of multiple and indeterminate choices and combinations – infinite within our limited capacity to perceive the variations, and repetitions, of the algorithm. We are invited to interact with the works, which in this sense function with us and in our presence, but which already carry within them the living memory of their author, the primal elements that for him are part of being an artist: the capacity for transformation, the possibility of transmutation that only true art can provide. As Valéry says, "l'ART, (…) est la qualité de la manière de faire (quel qu'en soit l'objet), qui suppose l'inégalité des modes d'opération, et donc celle des résultats, – conséquences de l'inégalité des agents." Art is a way of making that presupposes unequal agents and different results, and within a system limited by its contingencies, art is a way of unmaking the world of objects, turning the most everyday gestures into authentic gestures of creation and of permanent re-volution.
(text by Mirian Tavares)
Interview and news
Algarve Informativo – A arte interativa de Pedro Alves da Veiga em exposição na Galeria Trem
Universidade do Algarve – Exposição "Transmutações Generativas"
Wall Street International / Arte – Transmutações Generativas
Exposição de Pedro Alves da Veiga
http://www.sulinformacao.pt/2018/01/pedro-alves-da-veiga-leva-transmutacoes-generativas-a-faro/