Reabertura CSL :: Jorge Molder :: Jeu de 54 Cartes

JORGE MOLDER
Jeu de 54 cartes

In January 2019, Carpintarias de São Lázaro will open the exhibition Jeu de 54 cartes by Jorge Molder, one of the most recent work series by the Portuguese artist.

This exhibition now on display at Carpintarias de São Lázaro was already featured at MIEC - International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture in Santo Tirso, from October 2017 to January 2018.

Based on the typical structure of the popular French deck of cards, formed by four suits of thirteen cards each, the artist created a series of photographs with six parts. There are fifty-two images distributed by four suits (Faces, Hands, Bits, Spectres), plus two Jokers and a photograph of one so called by the artist 'Gabarito'. It turns out that in this exhibition we find not 54 cards, but 55...


The concept of game is an essential element in Jorge Molder's creative process. The game emerges as an activity that encourages a heuristic experience of things. It creates the possibility of opening up to everything that deviates from pre-established conventions, categories, and structures of understanding.

When applied to the art field, it is a concept that certifies art as a practice that formulates its own "rules". It allows the possibility of deferring deliberate intention, systematization and previous discourse, in favor of the experience of what is possible, spontaneous and available to interpretation.

"The game and consequently the chance and intuition suggest decisive questions in this research in which Jorge Molder correlates the work of simplification of (his) figures with the essential dilemmas of our relationship with images. If the images seem to reject the expectation of a unique and original, first and authentic I, given that each individual is also made up by his or her declinations and substitutes, at the same time they warn us about the paradoxical nature of the relationship between the image and each figure it presents. What is true and what is factual, in that body, in that gesture, in that expression? How to distinguish what separates and what juxtaposes between image and representation, between reality and fantasy, between the Self and the other(s)?"

(Sérgio Mah, curator of the exhibition held at MIEC - International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture, Santo Tirso).

Short bio:

The artist Jorge Molder (Lisbon, 1947) lives and works in Lisbon. He graduated in Philosophy at Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa (1972). Jorge Molder is an exceptional artist, likely one of the best known Portuguese artists and regarded as one of the most important Portuguese photographers of contemporary art.
His work is filled with mystery, for he often uses his own face, hands and body to reflect on what is unsolvable, the world of thoughts and dreams. Strongly influenced by literature and philosophy, Molder developed a taste for the "dark places of the soul," a certain "disturbing strangeness," the map of our desires and ambiguities.
In 1977 he held his first solo exhibition, and since then he has had numerous exhibitions in some of the world's well-known museums and galleries. In 2006 he was awarded the AICA / Portugal Prize and in 2010 the EDP Foundation Grand Prize / Art. He was a guest artist at the 24th São Paulo Biennale (1994), and represented Portugal at the 48th Venice Biennale (1999). He is represented in collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Museu Gulbenkian/Coleção Moderna da Fundação Gulbenkian, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, the Maison Européene de la Photographie and the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro.