The work of the photographer and plastic artist Daniel Mattar is recorded in both these subjects and, from there, reinvents itself in a new language with singular grammar and a universe of astonishing features, since they appear new, unadvised and without rules to start off, in the creative act.
Sometimes dreamlike, others gloomy, that universe reveals itself as if the lens and the camera's mechanical process were not the tools but also actors of these new world's revelations and astonishment that are presented before us.
The great size of the patent works in this exhibition may not denounce the artist's work's base, to begin with. Daniel Mattar gets out of the comfort of his studio, using press articles that make us aware of the rise of global temperatures and the way our planet's natural cycles are affected by these changes.
The whole action is developed on a 1,5 square inch surface, in solitude.
Here, the ink and paper are the main characters, manipulated, twisted, and driven. At last, in full complicity, they create colour waves as if they were violent brushstrokes or calm chromatic deposits, revealing messages or mere notes that question something without revealing it.
This restless communication between materials and the call for awareness about the global matter is the motto for the exposition: 'Rise'.
It is this restlessness that feeds the eye of Daniel Mattar. It is also that same restlessness that guides us.
'Rise' presents works that, by their own creative process and by the present thematic, solidly fit in the contemporaneity. It looks into the present, and takes a chance at predicting the future, knowing about the impossibility of achieving it.
Rui Guerreiro, 2018
Curator and Text: Rui Guerreiro
Exhibition set-up: Pedro Canoilas
Realization: Brisa Galeria
