INVASOR ABSTRACTO #7 | O tom do pomar

OSSO collective + Júlio Pomar | January 30 to May 26, 2024 | Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar


EXHIBITION-INSTALLATION : January 30 to May 26, 2024
CONCERT: May 10 at 9pm

“O tom do pomar” [The tone of the orchard], an exhibition project made in partnership with OSSO colectivo, has as its starting point an audio record of Júlio Pomar working in his studio, made by Ricardo Jacinto in 2012/13. Part of the installation, paintings from other public and private collections, such as Man with a scythe (1945) and Study for the Rice Cycle II (1953), are for the first time on display at Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar.

In this occupation of the Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar, OSSO colectivo aims to establish a set of relationships between a wide selection of works by Júlio Pomar and the sound and visual observations of social, natural, symbolic and material territory of the rural village of São Gregório, Caldas da Rainha, where this collective has its address.

The works of Rita Thomaz, Nuno Morão and Ricardo Jacinto, shown in this seventh “iteration” of Invasor Abstracto (a project by OSSO colectivo, dedicated to the conception of installations, performances and concerts, which has as its motto “an imagined journey between its creative territory and the host territory”), bring the village of São Gregório, in Caldas da Rainha, to the AMJP, generating an imaginary territory which is also a space for creation, reflection and public presentation, valuing what was actually a result of the April’s 1974 revolution: the possibility of collective and collaborative work.

The installation/exhibition, “O tom do pomar” [The tone of the orchard] had as its starting point an audio record of Júlio Pomar working in his studio, made by Ricardo Jacinto when, in 2012/13, he composed the soundtrack for Tiago Pereira’s film “Só o teatro é real”.

In a process of poetic contiguities (formal and symbolic) between the rural territory of São Gregório, the creative dynamics and idiosyncrasies of the OSSO colectivo, the plastic and political strength of Júlio Pomar’s selected works, the architecture of the AMJP and the celebratory context of the fiftieth anniversary of The 25 April or The Carnation Revolution, Invasor Abstracto becomes, in this iteration, an “atmospheric body”, populated by encounters between individual and collective strategies. In an installation that privileges spatial and symbolic instability, it is possible to find bodies in conflict, at play, at work, involved in pleasure or political action, side by side with the force of silence, death, landscape contemplation, rural labour or the solipsism of artistic creation.

This was the subject for the installation that now occupies the AMJP: line, color, sound, architecture, music, text and performativity are, at the same time and without hierarchies, “the plastic matter” of OSSO Colectivo’s artists, letting this occupation live off the specificities that each one of them brings to this “abstract invasion”.

From the collection and chromatic mapping work that Rita Thomaz has been developing around the flora of São Gregório, to the observations of the soundscape of the “fruit picking” that Nuno Morão carried out for this project, to the pieces (sculptural and musical) that Ricardo Jacinto has been creating based on the architectural and landscape features of that territory, this new intervention by Invasor Abstracto is, to date, the most intricate labyrinth presented within the scope of this project.

Although one usually harvests fruit from an orchard [pomar], this one is a transitory, collective, and colorful orchard, inhabited by dialogue and confrontation. An orchard of both intellectual and sensitive materials, experiences, and impressions. An orchard of ‘ugly’ fruit but also a territory of transdisciplinary knowledge, collectively made and produced – planted, grafted, nourished, watered, pruned, sprayed and harvested – by different hands”.

This exhibition/installation is part of the AMJP programme that, yearly, seeks to cross-reference Pomar’s work with the work of other artists, to establish new relationships between the painter’s work and the contemporary art world.

Under the artistic direction of Ricardo Jacinto, OSSO is a collective structure born in 2012 which comprehends artists and researchers from different areas (sound and music, the visual arts, photography, dance, performance, design, architecture and cinema) having developed its activity around creation and research, programming and training, in collaboration with other artists and groups of artists. Its projects seek to explore the conjunction between artistic practices and critical, aesthetic and political thinking, taking into account the specificity of the contexts and territories in which they operate.

CURATORS OSSO colectivo SET UP T.ART, Pedro Alves, Xavier Ovídio, Paulo Cunha e Samir Bichara DESIGN Joana Machado

Photography Copyright – Slider: 1,2,6,9: José Frade | EGEAC // Other photos: João Quirino