Raiz Quadrada [Square Root]

Sara Bichão

12.12.2024 > 18.01.2025   Curator: Luisa Especial

In 2007, as a Fine Arts student, Sara Bichão presented, in the corridors of the art school, two wooden doors on which she drew and painted; she applied the same procedure to the adjacent block of wall. Diverse signs, made with thin strokes, seemed to float, emerging and submerging according to the layers of paint. An umbrella, arrows, fruits and stairs that led nowhere. Most of the motifs drawn there did not appear to represent any known objects or forms.

A short time later, drawings characterised by a deliberately imperfect symmetry appeared on cement blocks with geometric or para-geometric shapes, demonstrating Bichão’s leaning towards a sensitive geometry: precise lines that converge towards a centre, eluding absolute rigour through the contrast with natural, emotional and gestural elements.

From 2012, the artist started to draw, assiduously, in small- and medium-sized notebooks. In these, the mobilisation of colour is a fundamental aspect. Intimate in scale, the motifs tend to surge toward the centre, leaving the rest of the page empty. We find, since this period at least, the recurrence of certain images, such as the circular or oval shapes that evoke natural and bodily elements. Although they might be fixations, these images are not repeated in an attempt to approach the drawn figure; instead they explore or invent declinations and derivations. In other words, there seems to be a desire to capture what a given image could be rather than an intention to represent it effectively. Meanwhile, other formats also receive her drawing, which continues to jump the margins of the page to settle on other surfaces.

Raiz Quadrada brings together around seventy works in which drawing plays a crucial role, reinforcing the notion of the constancy of this practice in Sara Bichão’s artistic production, in a way that is consistent, structural, and independent from the support.

In terms of drawing as an end in itself, for example the drawings on paper or fabric, some groups or ‘families’ emerged prominently as we carried out the inventory of works for this project: atmospheres, metamorphoses and schematic works. In all three aspects, the relationship with nature and the body is matrix.

When it inhabits objects, Bichão’s drawing characterises, creates a new memory, by animating (in the sense of imprinting with life). These are meticulous inscriptions to which the drawing adds information, a codification of its own, at times evoking a sewn line. Here, drawing is a means of marking, of adding visual information. In the case of the ‘suits,’ intended for human bodies, the drawing that appears on them resembles tattoos. On other occasions, it has the scale of writing – not forgetting that writing is also part of this creator’s artistic production.

On a third level, drawing can be regarded as spatial thought, as with the sculptures that resemble drawings of lines in space, which is also achieved through projected shadows.

Raiz Quadrada brings into dialogue a group of works in which drawing emerges as a fertile field of possibilities, a viral practice and source of mutual influence, assuming a multiplicity of roles. Contemplating a period of around 15 years of work allowed us to recognise certain common aspects and gestures that reinforce the central position held by drawing, and its polymorphism, at the heart of Sara Bichão’s practice. Two key aspects are worth mentioning: the coexistence of the animist aspect (of emotion, fantasy, energy, temperature, the poetic, the dreamlike, and lyricism) and the antinomies observed in, among other places, the desire for elevation that contrasts with the gravity experienced by the body and by the friction generated by the coloured poles. Verticality, another constant, is reinforced by the image of the root.

This project will continue to unfold, in 2025, with a publication featuring essays by Joana Neves, Noëlig Le Roux and Delfim Sardo, as well as further public presentations. The aim of this is to forge new relationships that can spread on the basis of greater knowledge of these works, their study and contextualisation.

Luísa Especial, December 2024

This exhibition was made possible thanks to the generous collaboration of around twenty collections, including: Colecção Fundação Carmona e Costa, Colecção ECO — Coimbra, Colecção de Arte Fundação EDP, Colecção Joaquim Ferro, Colecção Fran Kaufman, Colecção LCC, Colecção Norlinda e José Lima, Colecção M.A.R., Colecção Carlos Bessa Pereira, Coleção Figueiredo Ribeiro – Abrantes, Colecção José Costa Rodrigues, Galería silvestre, Galeria Filomena Soares, and other private collections.

This project was devised and developed by AiR 351 in collaboration with the artist Sara Bichão, with the support of the Directorate General for the Arts, the Carmona e Costa Foundation and the publisher Sistema Solar.

Appleton, December 2024

Courtesy : Appleton

Photo credit: Teresa Santos e Pedro Tropa @tspt.studiolab