Cut, shuffle, deal is the name of this work, part of Emergir – identity specific, an installation/exhibition presented by Maria Tomás (installation), Miguel Proença (multimedia), and Cristina Azevedo Tavares (curator) at the Casa dos Gessos do Museu Militar de Lisboa ( Plaster House of the Lisbon Military Museum).
This is an installation – an ambience that offers the viewer a different visual and aesthetic experience of the Casa dos Gessos and its works, keeping untouched the statue of D. José I, in the sense that its role as a gigantic pivot point, imposed by its monumental presence occupying the centre of the building, is untouched.
Focusing on the D. José I piece, Miguel Proença works to deconstruct the “urban” gaze through the photographs taken at the Terreiro do Paço square of the bronze statue of D. José I referencing the master plaster from which it was cast. He virtually places it in an impossible situation; in the Casa dos Gessos, and as such it once again dialogues with the other sculptures in a relation of proximity, through the grid of a chess board that evokes the bi-coloured floor of the room. It thus subverts the reading of this magnificent piece by Machado de Castro, polemical in its time, the master plaster is also extraordinary, as is the involved foundry work.
The room, only periodically opened to the public, exerts a fascination on those that enter it, be it the scale of the sculptures in relation to the building, be it the details that we can still observe after the casting to bronze, as by the group of pieces and the visual relationships that we can establish between them.” (Cristina Azevedo Tavares (Pt), curator, November, 2013, translated).
Emergir – identity specific and Cut, shuffle, deal was open to the public, from October 8th 2013 at the Casa dos Gessos, at Campo de Santa Clara, nº 62, in the vicinity of the National Pantheon, in Lisbon.