<p>Stones, endless lines, cracks, holes. Wombs, mineral uteruses. Generators of forms, of objects, of things, of substances. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Joachin Patinir invented his landscapes from a close, thorough study of stones and mosses from which he composed sublime forested mountains. In 1611, Phillip Hainhofer, a merchant from Augsburg, wrote to his brother about the stones he called &ldquo;florentine&rdquo;, describing them &ldquo;mit selbstgewachsenen Landschaften&rdquo; (with self-generated landscapes&rdquo;). Hainhofer supplied the duque of Pomerland, as well as the king of Sweden, with his famous kunstschranken (cabinets of curiosities)<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1"><span>[1]</span></a>. Stones as images, stones with images. Stones that generate imaginary landscapes, landscapes arising on stones.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>The stones where gestures were first laid upon, the hands, the images. Where images were born. Nurture, matter, mother. Scenario, background, substance, material. Forms from forms. Substances from substances. Countless cosmological traditions in which &ldquo;man&rdquo; is made, constructed, and made with pre-existing material: it is a transformation, perhaps a transubstantiation, an animation of that which is inert. Whatever the process, divine, voluntary, random, chemical, alchemical, astronomical, or astrological&hellip; All is everywhere, from the tiniest to the greatest, from Pliny to Carl Sagan.</p>
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<p>This exhibition looks for these semblances, these relations. It fictionalizes them, establishes them, constantly. It does it especially in the immutability of the mineral world, as Cezanne did in geological structures. It looks for it in the rigour of its framings, in the tactile proximity of textures, in the use of light and shadows. In what is small and big, in what is close and far, in what is inside and outside.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>A relation to the world, the whole world, through each concrete element, each concrete individual fragment. Each fragment, each detail is a vestige, a remnant of a path undertaken, a trace. Each one is significative; each tells stories and each one is the item of a collection.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>We return to Hainhofer. Kunschranken, kunstkamera, the fashion of the cabinets of curiosities. But also kunst, art, artifice. These deep holes, like these images, return us to opposing poles, in a specular relation that is, after all, photography &ndash; that is ultimately, the image itself. Reflexes of light, traces of the sky, clouds on the water that gathered there. Shadows and light. In the landscape tradition of the intangible.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The tradition of landscape, where these works definitely belong is, however, that of the general plane, it is the contemplation of the vastness of the world. Here, in these works, a plane of proximity is imposed, and in each small thing, the vastness of the world is insinuated. Here, we can read a proximity, which I feel like calling &ldquo;feminine&rdquo;, of &ldquo;care&rdquo; and not of &ldquo;masculine&rdquo; &ldquo;heroicity&rdquo;.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>It is, as in Matisse&rsquo;s painting, a humanized, modern nature, of people who, when depicted, are swimming and sailing and having fun. These are images where the specular relation between the world and photography, between macro and micro, allows us to think photography metalinguistically, but are not constructed as conceptual objects. And they are also objects of our time, of the Anthropocene: where does nature begin and culture &ndash; art, and artifice end?</p>
<p></p>
<p>Jos&eacute; Ant&oacute;nio Leit&atilde;o, 2022</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1"><span>[1]</span></a> <span>Jurgis Baltru&scaron;aitis, Aberrations s.l., Flamarion, s.d., pp. 89, 96. </span></p>

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      <p>Stones, endless lines, cracks, holes. Wombs, mineral uteruses. Generators of forms, of objects, of things, of substances. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Joachin Patinir invented his landscapes from a close, thorough study of stones and mosses from which he composed sublime forested mountains. In 1611, Phillip Hainhofer, a merchant from Augsburg, wrote to his brother about the stones he called &ldquo;florentine&rdquo;, describing them &ldquo;mit selbstgewachsenen Landschaften&rdquo; (with self-generated landscapes&rdquo;). Hainhofer supplied the duque of Pomerland, as well as the king of Sweden, with his famous kunstschranken (cabinets of curiosities)<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1"><span>[1]</span></a>. Stones as images, stones with images. Stones that generate imaginary landscapes, landscapes arising on stones.<span></span></p>
      <p>Jos&eacute; Ant&oacute;nio Leit&atilde;o</p>
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      <p>At the beginning there was the discovery of the sea energy, of the land, of the mountains, of the silence, of the lost streets, of the lush vegetation, of the hot water that springs from the land on a cold night, the darkness that threatens the shy sun. Then it was the return and the reunion with everything that became familiar and of which I was already a part of.</p>
      <p><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">Now, I needed to find out what is beyond the doors of family houses, that seem to have always been there, firm, facing the sea, with nothing to promise, but with stories to tell. The common or sacred objects, the portraits of those who live and of their ancestors, the family atmosphere charged with slow time, the aura of what remains.</span></p>
      <p><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">(Series in development in the Azores)</span></p>
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<p>It took me some time to realize exactly what moved me in Catarina's images. Initially, I was convinced it was the quality of light she could reveal, and I remembered the image of a boy at the top of an escarpment overlooking the sea with his back to the camera, his gaze fixed on the water, and a sand-colored towel fluttering over his bare shoulder. I remember thinking how the intensity of that escarpment - in theory, the driest of landscapes - could serve as a good example of how much a picture can magnify our experience of reality. I confirmed this initial theory in other images that shared, with this one, an assumed tendency for the hyper-representation of textures, for a wide and clear depth of field, for a judicious compositional construction and even for an episodic approximation to the protocols, effects and visual regimes of painting.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Up until a certain time, therefore, my relationship with Catarina's works was based on a kind of formal fascination, as if the astonishment my eyes returned to her images kept me from realizing what was being portrayed beyond the surface. Another image, however, broke this alienation and began to reveal the tangle of procedures, relationships and thematic recurrences that underlie Catarina's practice and have met new and deeper unfoldings in this exhibition. In that image, a young man (the same?) is lying on the grass, his back turned to the camera, his naked trunk sprinkled with small signs, like a map without a territory. The quality of the light, the richness of the textures, the compositional rigor and the pictorial allusion remained, but what was revealed now was, above all, the degree of intimacy supporting this photograph and the way in which the arrangement of what is omitted and what is shown promotes a kind of short circuit in the suggestive valence of the image, preventing our attention from dissipating or from deciphering it.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The fact that this exhibition has earned the title of Eclipse is not entirely causal. In fact, much of what is presented here, and of how it is presented, has to do with this phenomenon of occultation that the idea of ​​eclipse signals: an interposing body, another one fragmented, an all veiling shadow and the halo of things that are hidden and, in this condition, seem to shine stronger. The hiding and fragmenting of the eclipse that brings us here is the fruit of a trained gaze: one that knows how to cut out of a scene everything and only that which will keep us interested. That knows that this interest depends entirely on a denial, a refusal to declare at once its true attempts, and the reverse effect this refusal provokes in the imagination. The less you see, the more you imagine, and this is a secret that Catarina knows only too well.</p>
<p></p>
<p>It is, most probably, why everything in this exhibition is deliberately partial, truncated, dubious. It is all (or almost) at a distance of two steps, this measure that is not close enough for everything to become an abstraction, nor too far for it to become a description. It is a distance that puts us in the place of the participant rather than in the place of the witness and thus leaves us in command of the vehicle of meaning the set of these images will create. Between the angular view of a broken window, the perfect symmetry of a horse's hair, a body resting on an uncertain bed, the windshield of a car that mirrors the city, the blind gaze of a plaster figure in a manor house - the impressive picture of the suggestion to remind us that the narrative is more intriguing when it is silent, the gaze is sharpest when it does not find what it seeks, the sun more ponderous when the moon stands in between.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Bruno Marchand</p>

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      <p>"The fact that this exhibition has earned the title of Eclipse is not entirely causal. In fact, much of what is presented here, and of how it is presented, has to do with this phenomenon of occultation that the idea of ​​eclipse signals: an interposing body, another one fragmented, an all veiling shadow and the halo of things that are hidden and, in this condition, seem to shine stronger. The hiding and fragmenting of the eclipse that brings us here is the fruit of a trained gaze: one that knows how to cut out of a scene everything and only that which will keep us interested. That knows that this interest depends entirely on a denial, a refusal to declare at once its true attempts, and the reverse effect this refusal provokes in the imagination. The less you see, the more you imagine, and this is a secret that Catarina knows only too well."</p>
      <p>Bruno Marchand</p>
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