It is with great pleasure that we announce ECHOES OF A DISTANT TIME, the first solo show by Miguel Marquês at the gallery.

OPENING
Thursday, April 03 | 7 – 9.30 PM
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DURATION
03.04 – 31.05.2025

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It's difficult to find traces of human life in these photographs by Miguel Marquês, and yet the attraction that the post-apocalyptic setting of the unfinished building in Prior Velho has inspired in the photographer points out precisely that the reinforced concrete we see in the images, the flirtation of the lugubrious place, the repetition, give an account of a kind of fixation that only our species is subject to. 

Miguel Marquês walks around there (as a human) and seems to be searching, seems on the verge of finding something. You could say he's looking for someone, a sign of life, an inscription. At times resembling architectural photography, the images of the building's foundations are anti-architecture, because Miguel has allowed himself to be trapped by what is prior to our occupation. 

Perhaps what drives the photographer is less history than the promise of history. What would that place be used for? What would its occupation look like - and the faces and voices of its occupants? 

It is the unfinished structure that captures the photographer, occasional spills, glimpses of infesting botanical species that sprout spontaneously due to the building's contact with nature, which gradually deteriorates and naturalizes it. Even if, in front of the colossus, we were led to think that those walls had been erected in Prior Velho for centuries and would only come down due to human intervention, Miguel Marquês' images show how nature takes care of all our spoils. 

Strange as it may seem, the abandoned building is now a shelter for street animals and homeless people: its dryness doesn't prevent us from seeing it as an open-door inn. Who will shelter there from the rain? 

And then Miguel Marquês' images lose their rawness because they let us guess at presences, even if they are ghostly. Perhaps Miguel Marquês photographed an open house in the city and not an empty place. Perhaps open houses in the city always look like abandoned places. What does this sad hostel tell us about our cities and ourselves? This summons is the correlative of Miguel Marquês' obsession with this place, which he photographed as if it were sending the question back to us, without the temptation to answer it.

DJAIMILIA PEREIRA DE ALMEIDA
January 2025

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ECHOES OF A DIFFERENT TIME

Miguel Marquês
03.04 – 31.05.2025
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Exhibition Text : Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida
Photography : Bruno Lopes 
Video : João Silva

Exhibition set up / art handling: Pedro Canoilas
Special thanks to: Rui Neiva