Paulo BRIGHENTI (1968)

Paulo Brighenti, born in Lisbon in 1968, completed the Ar.Co’s Advanced Arts course and belongs to the most recent generation of Portuguese artists.

In 1996, the year following the Ar.Co’s exhibition for graduating students and scholarship recipients, Paulo Brighenti participated in his first group exhibition at the CAMJAP– 7 Artistas ao 10.º Mês (7 Artists at the 10th Month), where he exhibited his work alongside artists with whom he developed several joint experiments, both in the field of painting and of drawing– Os Últimos Dias (The Last Days), Lisbon, CAMJAP, 2000; Uma Jornada (A Journey), Funchal, Porta 33, 2001; Guardi. A Arte da Memória (Guardi: The Art of Memory), Centro Cultural de Belém, 2003.

The artist started exhibiting solo at the Galeria Paula Fampa in Braga (1997); this was followed by a showing at the Galeria Pedro Cera (Lisbon, 1998) and at the Faprojects (2001) in London.

The artist’s first works presented to the public included a video piece, an installation, and drawings portraying three dimensional black buildings. The prevalence of sombre hues, particularly blacks, greys, and browns (although alert observation might manage a glimpse of a hidden palette of vibrant colours), has made itself a powerful presence in Paulo Brighenti’s visual journey (particularly in the paintings exhibited at the Galeria Pedro Cera in 1998).

At the 7 Artistas ao 10.º Mês (7 Artists in the 10th Month) exhibition, Paulo Brighenti showed a set of watercolour drawings in bluish hues depicting details of hands that constituted a single piece, in spite of the autonomy of each drawing– an approach that has also become characteristic of his work.

The use of landscape, as a narrative plot and as a formal object, has been the catalyst at the centre of the artist’s practice of drawing and painting. He has also found in Mannerism, in the Italian Baroque, and in American minimalist expressionism important reference points.

The landscapes that form the artist’s nucleus in the CAMJAP collection, small oils on wood, had as their point of origin Polaroids, initially inspiring ink on card pieces, and subsequently charcoal drawings. Thus his work reflects a progressive construction process, where different means are employed to achieve a single end: the representation of landscape through the history of painting itself. However, the reminiscence of the initial phases, obtained from a set of photographs, as if they were a photo album (or a mosaic), remains in the reading of the work. Therefore, even though the work is composed of fragments, it acquires complete legibility when taken as a whole.

ALEXANDRE CONEFREY