Alexandre CONEFREY (1961)

Alexandre Conefrey was born in Lisbon in 1961. He attended Ar.Co’s drawing class between 1993 and 1995 and also participated in an exchange program between the Royal College of Art in London and Ar.Co, with a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. He has had several one person and group exhibits such as 7 Artistas ao 10.º Mês, in 1996, Últimos Dias, in 2000, and Guardi, a Arte de Memória, in 2003.

Alexandre Conefrey has built up a body of work based essentially on the practice of drawing as a way of describing/writing the world. This practice can be explored in two ways simultaneously: on the one hand through the themes in his production, and on the other hand through the materiality of his work. We will start with the second approach. The medium of each work or series is a cause for Alexandre Conefrey’s careful consideration. Related more to the craft side of his practice, he selects it meticulously so that it will suit the work in question as well as possible– parchment, ivory, wooden plaques, canvas, paper of varying thicknesses.

The format of the pieces also deserves pondered reflection. Of all the different formats he uses, the book is one of his most preferred choices. Often a book written in the form of a drawing, where the spectator takes on the role of the narrator or at least has the task of reconstructing the narrative through the sequential reading of the loose sheets.

No matter what the formats and the mediums used in his production, we always find the same motifs and thematic concerns. Seen as a whole his work becomes a meditation on the forces that animate western civilisation, which for the artist are based mainly on conflicts of war in the modern era. As such his pieces are tragic essays on the condition of mankind, in which a disturbing historical past is revealed. Nonetheless they signal a simultaneous aspiration for a redemptive future. His works are reflections on the historical and cultural, ethical and poetic memory of western culture and on the artist himself.

His aesthetic approach is citational. In other words he appropriates a series of references and images of other works, illustrations, photographs (his or from any other publication) and, related to this quoting exercise, the artist then decontextualises these images. Conefrey isolates an element, such as soldiers on a battlefield, or the field itself, dislocating its meaning and its immediate reading and converting it into a metaphor or an emblem. In addition to the theme of war, landscape is another element present in all of his production, frequently appearing as the background in his compositions, as a platform where action unfolds but never becomes visible. The action is frozen in time, making it possible to revisit it and meditate on it through the “and ifs…” of the history of History.

The landscape ends up usurping the action, becoming a central motif for reflection in his work. It is sublimated and romanticised beyond a human dimension, which would have informed it in another context.

These are extremely ironic images where behind something obviously beautiful some of the most tragic events of the history of mankind are hidden. This contrast of meanings is suggested or reinforced by the title of the piece. The word therefore takes on an important position. Beyond its function in describing the work it is also frequently incorporated into the image itself. From listings of the names of Jews interred in concentration camps, to names of battles and submarines, from hieroglyphs to quotations, the word even gains a double-meaning: a literal one but also, and perhaps even more importantly, an iconic meaning. According to Walter Benjamin, the word possesses its own aura and in the work of Conefrey, transformed into a visual element, it acquires a poetic dimension in the light of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s experiments in concrete poetry.

Confrey’s work in colour is also worth emphasizing. He was powerfully influenced by a Pop aesthetic and his work is marked by the artificiality and inversion of values, adding yet another stratum of meaning to the already densely layered images.

FILIPA OLIVEIRA