The exhibition ‘Pó e cinzas e outros desenhos’ (Dust and ashes and other drawings) by J. J. Marques, artist and Assistant Professor in the FBAUP Drawing Department, will be on show in the FAUP Library Atrium from 23 October to 23 December 2024, as part of the Riscotudo project curated by FAUP professors José Manuel Barbosa and José Maria Lopes.

The opening takes place on Wednesday 23 October at 2pm, followed by an Open Class from 3pm to 4pm (meeting in the FAUP library atrium) entitled ‘Drawing and surveying a place - strategies, modes and systems of representation’ with José Manuel Barbosa (FAUP) and Jorge Marques (FBAUP).

The exhibition, which is free to enter, can be visited until 23 December 2024, in the FAUP Library Atrium, from Monday to Friday, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. (closed on public holidays).

‘Dust and ashes and other drawings’ brings together, in addition to the drawings from the dust and ashes series, other drawings that have somehow been left behind. They are drawings that were part of previous research, notes, intentions that were not continued. They are drawings that survive in some way - there is no real intention of showing them. Rather, there is a desire to let them be seen among each other, as remnants, a kind of deposit, testimonies to their own indeterminacy.

Dust and ashes was an expression I used to describe a certain state of reality. A reality that is about to transform or that is changing due to some kind of natural or human impact. The expression also suggests an imminent transition, where natural or cultural elements, civilisational or otherwise, may be in the process of disappearing, evolving or deteriorating.

These drawings also allude to the duality of existence, dust and ashes, as an inevitable transformation of the body and of nature and all other artificial or cultural creations. They are drawings in a state of catastrophe, represented by dust and ashes, which remind us of the inevitability of transition and renewal.

This dynamic aspect adds a temporal layer to the drawings, evoking their own process of realisation - depositing, moving, dragging, preserving, superimposing, fixing... In the drawings, flatness becomes an essential element in the expression of a certain atmospheric spatiality. The whole process depends on the touch of the hand on the paper, the speed and pressure of the gestures, as if the drawing existed, with each touch, between the skin and the paper, and was thus progressively deposited.

On the surface of the paper, the transience and ephemerality of its own evolution are explored as silent testimonies to the events of the drawing. Some added depth, layer after layer, leads us to witness its own formation and transformation. A double narrative emerges between these dust particles. One that, evoked in the gesture, refers to a certain idea of landscape, or a certain state of reality, and another that refers to the process of making the drawing, as an act of resistance against imminent disappearance or oblivion.The drawing reminds us of this.
— J. J. Marques

J. J. Marques (Joaquim Jorge Marques, b. 1967). Visual artist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Drawing at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, where he has taught since 1998. He is a collaborating member of the Institute for Research in Art, Design and Society - I2ADS. He has a PhD in Art and Design - in the scientific area of Drawing - from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, on the subject of ‘The process as a circumstance of drawing - Contributions to the study of experimental process models. As a lecturer and researcher, he has focused on understanding the issues involved in drawing processes and how they can become a viable means of thinking and conceiving drawing. As an artist, he has been exploring the idea of limits in the definition of processes conventionally associated with painting, drawing and photography. His most recent exhibitions include ‘Drawing Things Together’, at the Biodiversity Gallery of the University of Porto (9 October to 18 December 2024) and ‘Dust’, at Art Lab 24 Contemporary Art, in Espinho (2023).

The Riscotudo project is a space at FAUP for drawing exhibitions located in the Library Auditorium Atrium. Designed by José Manuel Barbosa, who shares the curatorship with José Maria Lopes, Riscotudo is ‘an exhibition space where proposals are presented that work on the graphic and plastic elements of drawing, favouring different techniques and aesthetic conceptions’.

Free entry (subject to capacity).Programme subject to change (without prior notice).This event may be recorded and publicised by FAUP through photography and video.

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