ISABEL PAVÃO Book Signing

Porto – Paris – New York

Porto – Paris – New York is both the title of this book and the defining stages along a journey, that of the artist. The work of Isabel Pavão is rooted in the western tradition, its anchors tie her to the experience of the studio, and its immediate pretexts emerge from the urban situations through which she has lived.

When we speak of the places Porto, Paris, New York, we are not speaking exclusively of this cultural cartography, of its physical and geographical configuration, of its urban design and dominant architectonic languages, but of the particular character of their communities, of the human and cultural atmosphere that is breathed there, of the historic and identifying symbols that belong only to those places. The paintings of Isabel Pavão emerge from a geo-emotive perspective without silencing completely the geo-political perspective.

Places insinuate themselves into her work and make us accompany her on every change of scenery, every border crossed. Borders are both natural and administrative, but also cultural, linguistic and sentimental. In each one there is a political charge, because every separation involves decisions and power relationships, and a psychological charge, as the familiar is replaced by the unknown.

The book reviews the series produced in the three cities, and includes an anthology of texts from writers, critics, and art historians.

The Steps of Isabel Pavão

”Isabel Pavão left Portugal to study and broaden her knowledge and her artistic practices. She left Porto upon graduation in the 1980s and went to Paris, where she took a Master’s, then on to New York, where she put down roots in the beginning of the 1990s. It was there where she carried out the research for her doctoral thesis in the arts. The knowledge accumulated in each border crossing, the reflections provoked, and the questions raised are reflected both directly and indirectly in her painting. Because there she found, as stated beforehand, difference and alterity. And if the breath-taking visual dimension of her work may, in certain cases, dominate the problems being explored, she never extinguishes the dialogue generated between cultural and artistic contexts. ...

... She also allowed herself to be influenced by that window in her studio that permitted her to gaze outside and observe nature and, at the same time, peer into the interior of the surfaces on which she was working (Impressions series). The artist says about this series: Impressions Series represents a phase of my work, integrating in it, as usual, intimations of my continuous project enduring patterns of inner experience and conceptual processes as a work in progress that is a reflection on the “act of painting”. […] The naming of Impressions refers to various layers of meanings as well as a working process. There is a display of interpretations of atmospheric/ psychological imprint: I approach the paintings in this series as images/impressions that allude also to particular moods through their shifting complexions, being marks from Memory and Nature. ...

... The sources of Isabel Pavão help us to depict possible characterization of her presence in the field of the arts. She is an artist for whom discovery, dissatisfaction and desire combine in a course that, while controlled by the method already described, continuously exposes itself to new risks. Each incorporation of materials is a migration, and advance into unknown territory. The way in which materials are organized, hidden, and revealed, the way in which a body is constructed via subtractions and additions are methods by which to attain the unrecognized ...

... Finally, one could speak about the square in Isabel Pavão, not as a frame or definition of a center, but as a heart. The heart or the place where the beat of painting and life resides. This would no longer be an intellectual construction, but a sensitive and emotional creation” ...

Laura Castro

Porto-Paris- New York, The Steps of Isabel Pavão