Linguistic ground zero - João Louro
Art, Architecture, and Technology Museum (Project Room), MAAT, Belem, Lisbon, Portugal
ABOUT THE WORK
Linguistic Ground Zero, João Louro's new project conceived for the Project Room at MAAT, reflect on this historical point at which art and society appeared to coincide in the the need to eradicate everything.
The project consists of a reproduction of "Little Boy" - the first atomic bomb in history that razed the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6th August 1945. Like most bombs, on which soldiers write messages, this bomb also carries inscriptions. Only in this case, the text refers to art, politics, culture and the avant-gardes.
João Louro establishes a confluence between the physical destruction caused by the atomic bomb and the symbolic destruction that formed part of different strategies in art during the avant-gardes: a shared fascination for destruction alongside a desire for renovation, debating from the ground zero to which the title alludes.
As part of the research project of Linguistic Ground Zero, the exhibition also includes drawings and documents.
SOURCE: MAAT
BIOGRAPHY
João Louro was born in 1963, in Lisbon, where he lives and works. He studied architecture at the University of Lisbon and painting at the Ar.Co School of Visual Art. João Louro’s body of work encompasses painting, sculpture, photography and video.
João Louro’s work descends from minimal and conceptual art, with special attention to avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. It draws out a topography of time, with references that are personal but mainly they are generational. With regular recourse to language as a source, as well as the written word, he seeks a review of the image in contemporary culture, starting out from a set of representations and symbols from the collective visual universe.
Minimalism, conceptualism, Pop culture, structuralism and post-structuralism, authors such as Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Georges Bataille and Blanchot as well as artists like Donald Judd and the ever-present Duchamp, form the reference lexical universe of the artist.
He was the portuguese representative at the Venice Biennale of 2015, with the exhibition I Will Be Your Mirror | Poems and Problems.
PDF CV (inglês)
SOURCE: joaolouro.com/about/