Appleton Square is pleased to present «LP», a solo exhibition featuring new paintings by Portuguese artist Rui Valério. The exhibition will also mark the premiere of the artist’s latest video-installation, titled ‘Imaginary Landscape #5,’ on view in the gallery basement.

Rui Valério is best known for taking the musical world as his primary subject matter. His work spans sculpture, VJing, painting, installation, video and more, and ascribes to the post-medium condition as dubbed by art historian and theorist Rosalind Krauss; a condition that vacates the artwork of Greenbergian orthodoxy, namely  the question of  autonomy, to relocate it squarely in the domain of experience.

«LP» consists of a group of large canvases specially conceived for this exhibition and a video which will be projected throughout the duration of the show. The canvases on view in the main gallery are exact replicas or takings from several record covers that feature, on the most part, visual artist-musician couplings, landmarks in the cross-fertilization between the visual arts and music. Valério’s appropriations, immediately recognizable to the minimalist lover, have a common thread: pitted against commercial music, these records capture moments when the parameters of musicality and sound were questioned and exceeded; where music wasn’t necessarily made, but used; where the inaudible becomes audible; where absence of intentional sound is foregrounded, where a politics of sound seems to unfold. Valério’s takings are not of the audible type, nonetheless, the exhibition resounds and trembles with the suggestion of these recordings. In the vein of this minimalist entourage, Valério’s production seeks to remove suggestions of personal expressivity through his dead-pan rendering of the original sleek covers.

As to the video ‘Imaginary Landscape  #5,’ Valério based his work on John Cage’s score for a piece by the same title, ‘Imaginary Landscape #5,’ a randomly mixed recording of 1952, originally meant to be realized on magnetic tape. ‘Imaginary Landscape #5’ is representative of Cage’s compositional aesthetic – I-Ching or Chinese book of changes – which influenced him greatly in his employment of elements of chance. Valério reinterprets the Cagean collage of fragments using 42 records from his own private collection, capturing the actualized score on DVPAL. Visually, one experiences the 42 covers, layered simultaneously according to the volume of each record. No longer evident, the images become shimmering, ghostly. Aurally, the din, depending on each viewer’s sensitivity, is deafening. As we emerge from this immersive experience, we become aware of the pervasiveness of sound and the impossibility of quiet in a babbling and image-saturated world. ND

Rui Valério was born in Lisbon in 1969, where he lives and works. He attended the Ar.Co school in Lisbon for a year and started exhibiting his work individually in 1993. In 1997, he completed his degree in Painting at the University of Lisbon’s Fine Arts College (FBAL). Valério is a lecturer at the University of Évora. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Historia de La Musica Rock’, CAMJAP, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2003 and ‘Historia de La Musica Rock’, Atelier Museu António Duarte, Caldas da Rainha, 2002. Recent group participations include ‘Densidade Relativa’, CAMJAP, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2005; ‘A Noite na Terrra’, Plataforma Revólver, Lisbon, 2004; ‘Entre Duas Luzes’, National Assembly, Lisbon, 2004; ’30 Artists Under 40’, Stenerson Museum, Oslo, 2004.