Chasing the invisible addresses subjects regarding invisibility, by examining the state of things that remain hidden or are kept unseen. A research on our current relationship with laptop and smartphone screens as well as other technological devices, reflecting about the mass-consumption of beauty in the digital age. This exploration includes the video work “About Faces” that regards these screens as vessels for the so called libidinal economy.

The show includes as well the “Fluids Series”, a group of paintings with a digital image printed on fabric and acrylic paint applied across the edges. In all of the images, one finds as a backdrop the Photoshop’s checkered pattern, a representation of transparency, the invisible, or the empty space to be filled with images or desires. Consisting of an investigation about images as mental manifestation or as a sort of digital surrealism, the show explores the tension between the digital, technology and its consumption strategies, the production of desire and the desire of products, progressing into a critic about the relations of art as a commodity, a product of desire and consumption.

The works presented at the show follow the narrative established within the field of “Sebastian, the ghost”, a video installation that investigates the idea of ghost as those living in a former Portuguese colony, and that are haunted by the myth of the ghost of King Sebastian; or as in “The Haunted Screensavers”, a site-specific intervention at the computers of CalArts’ library, where the artist begun a reflection on the subject of invisibility, exploring the tensions between aesthetics and perception, rethinking historical and social events politically.

Photography by Bruno Lopes.

Lúcia Prancha - Chasing the invisible
Baginski, Galeria/Projectos, November 18 - January 9
www.baginski.com.pt