SLIPPERY SLOPECurated by Carolina Fangueiro + Letícia Costelha

João Eurico, Leonor Talefe, Marcelo Reis, Náhir Capêlo

We have slipped our way here. The path deviates and reality escapes at every step. Things appear in the dark, they merge, reveal themselves, disappear again. Noise becomes image and light, time is drawn on stone. Ancient symbols are collapsed with artifacts of the now, the shelter hosts us so we can imagine new possibilites in these images. Here, time is different, one can not possess it, it has no price nor owner. Doubting makes us stay, without fear of not understanding and with the confidence we will get to the answers we need. We will imagine them, and they will be true. Despite the chance that brought us here, the cave welcomes us and asks us to stay, so that we are here, calmly, together. 

Slippery Slope is a collective exhibition by four young artists from Porto, with practices that cross the threshold of the real through images, to think other times and unexplored possibilities, reminding us that the path to change requires that we are able to imagine it first. 

Leonor Talefe explores through her artistic practice questions relating to the space we share and how we relate to each other: working together, learning together, creating a space that is communal between us and what surrounds us. She uses the creative process and shared experiences as part of the work itself, resorting to archives, objects, and collective memory, based on familiar images from everyday life and daily routine, in order to come close to what that shared space could be. 

João Eurico is an artist born and living in Porto, trained in photography, driven by a primitive interest in the image as language. His work crosses various themes and ideias ranging from chance and symbolism, to pop culture, exploring states of consciousness and the way in which humans relate to each other, with technology and the planet. He uses mainly collage, drawing, and painting as sites of projection, mediation, and distortion of the human experience. His practice does not seek fixed answers, but to instead open possibilities, to accept contradictions and to keep up with the complexity of things — human and non human. 

Marcelo Reis is a musician an visual artist. He holds a B.A. in Cinema and Audiovisual by ESAP, a MFA by FBAUP and he is a PhD student in FBAUP. His body of work focuses on thinking the plastic possibilities of the signal and in what ways transcoding to different supports affects the referent of the message that the signal carries. The resulting message is presented in formats such as installation, sound, and printed image. 

Náhir Capêlo (1994) Lives and works in Porto. She attended the Visual Arts and Photography at Escola Superior Artística do Porto (2015-2018) and, in 2021, she concluded a Master’s Degree in Visual Arts — Intermedia at Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto. Her practice ranges installation, video, photography and sound, often related to themes such as time, nature, and cultural criticism. Her work is developed from the observation of the slow and nearly imperceptible processes of transformation of matter, understanding nature as a hybrid and unstable concept.