Inês Soares

Yonder Aí Onde - Prints

From 18 August to 17 September 2022

‘There where’ is born from the double certification of presence and place, but also from the idea of a current time and a suspended or interrupted action. Where? It could be a question. To be sure.  To dilute the vague in a specific location.

By using this expression to name her most recent exhibition, Inês Soares reinforces the idea of printmaking as an experimental territory where time - of concept and doing, of finding and revealing, of mastery and chance - and space - of intervention, of gesture, of the body, of dialogue beyond the piece - intersect.

  ‘Yonder’, also used by the artist as a nomenclature for the set, is an old expression for “over there”. Over there. Beyond. Further away. Far away?

In one of his reflections on the idea of longejura, the Italian poet Antonio Prete describes it as the action of ‘giving presence to what is subtracted from presence’. He adds that ‘to think of distance is to give a configuration and a rhythm to the invisible, a language to the unattainable. To welcome the extreme. This chance is the drive of all the arts. The distance is the distance observed in its movement towards representation, in its becoming a figure. The distance observed in the time and space of its camping."[1]

The terms used to name the set that is now being presented embody the very meaning of what is being seen: a dozen engravings made from the manipulation of copper, the inking of the matrix in successive approximations until the final image is discovered. Salvaged from what seems to have a temporality far removed from an archaeological find, but grounded in today's times, in everyday objects that are recognisable to everyone: a bowl, a cup, a knife. A glass floats and the bottom seems to be divided into a hundred fragments. The large piece suspended in the gallery is actually made up of recomposed pieces. A large jigsaw puzzle captivating colours, variations of blue, pieces of sky.

Sometimes the territory of the scratched word emerges with force, absorbing the memory of a song heard, ‘Nem é o tempo que o faz’, a pun of meanings, ‘real lisa doira’. Others are just movement, almost calligraphy, almost gesture. Fluctuations of lines and links. Knots. Creating links between the images on display.

Back to the beginning: yonder. 

A distance that's almost close. A palpable distance.

The distance of the gaze.

‘YONDER, there where: a bouncing BEING called INÊS SOARES.

‘Yes, this is her first solo exhibition.

‘They are prints, yes, but also objects that are difficult to classify, which plays in her favour.

‘There's a poetry and candour that seems to spring naturally, sweetly and joyfully from her bouncy BEING.

‘Where is Wally, I mean, this INÊS who doesn't seem to want to land anywhere in order to be better, always, there, here, there.

‘Certainly a refreshing discovery in this summer that is as fickle as it is frightening, but which doesn't seem to be able to disturb a poetry that eschews words so that it can better surrender itself to a silence that only the heart knows...’

Vitor Pomar, 15 August 2022

‘Paper and engraving are the common features of the works presented in this exhibition, using these media in various ways and at different stages of maturation.

‘The engravings are reminiscent of objects found and lost, in a cave, in a very old tomb, or in everyday life. They are objects that could be part of a survival kit for moving house or for a picnic...

‘They are empty of meaning and look at us with their own useful emptiness.

‘They accompany the continuous day-to-day of life, where they stop to exist in their own time, and gain the present distance of the gaze.

‘The collage presented is made by reusing paper from the prints, it arises from multiplicity, it provides repetition and reassembly of the subjects. The whole can be a cloud or a stone of multiple geological formation, which condenses, agglomerates, multiplies and distributes.

‘The objects on paper are initial studies of a work in progress, and have in common with the rest of the work the idea of emptiness and containment. Because they are present on site, the function of the space is transformed and disarranged to receive them, so recognisable and at the same time unusual.’

Inês Soares

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[1] Treatise on distance. Essay by Antonio Prete (translated by Andrea Ragusa and Sofia Andrade) in https://torpor.abysmo.pt/ensaio/tratado-da-lonjura/, consulted in July 2022.

Inês Soares

(Portuguese - 1976, lives and works in Lisbon)

Architect, teaches art atelier to primary school students.

Individual printmaking work at the Cooperativa Diferença studio since 2005.  Artist residencies in printmaking at Kawalabo Studio!, Tokyo 2014, and Kala Art Institute Berkeley, California 2017. 

Participation in exhibitions, including:  Diferença 40 years - all included!; Diferença Obra gráfica, SNBA 2019; Orto de Incendio - Roma Istituto per la Gráfica and Museu do Chiado, 2019; Lareira - collaboration with Maria Ribeiro at Casa Atelier Vieira da Silva in 2020.