2006
Phantasms
Nuno Cera's projects focus on the matter that makes up cities: the buildings that inhabit them and the lonely frenzy of their residents. Very specifically in the degradation of urban life. They also emphasize our condition as mortals, eternally wandering along a determined path (incapacitated as we are for stillness), but irrelevant in the face of the inevitable weight of death. It focuses on what makes us eternal wandering nomads and almost inevitably potential ghosts (souls that refuse to recognize their own death).
Title: Phantasms
Number of pages: 137
Year: 2006
Country: Portugal
City: Lisbon
ISBN/ISSN: 978-972-8944-08-7
Width (mm): 210
Height (mm): 260
Cover type: Soft cover with dust jacket
Bind types: Perfect Binding
Print types:
General notes: Gallery 2 on the 1st floor of the CCB Exhibition Center was transformed into a kind of black box specially designed for the exhibition; an exhibition design that greatly enhances the exhibition of videos, photographs and drawings that make up the exhibition “Ghosts” by Nuno Cera (curated by Nuno Crespo). The first confrontation with the video “Untitled (Iris with Tropicamide)” – which projects the artist's eye 2 meters in diameter – creates a colossal and intimidating effect that suggests that the spectator is being observed and that, at the same time, he is allowed to delve into the gigantic eyeball in order to get in touch with the capture and projection mechanisms that characterize Nuno Cera's projects. In front of the video, the photograph “Being Anywhere #9” shows a film camera and alludes to the metaphor that, whether mechanical or physiological, perception processes are always manipulable. If the eyes are the mirror of the soul, then the artist takes off his clothes and asks the viewer for a similar surrender - the willingness to abandon voyeurism and look within himself.
