Trespassing

With the following artists:
Martin Paaskesen and Tiago Evangelista.

text by Madalena Pequito,

A child walks in the street. He steps on the Portuguese tyles and counts each stone that is out of place, leaving a hole in the sidewalk. For some reason, these holes on the floor give him a strange feeling of happiness, as if this void could be the start of another story. He jumps from stripe to stripe on the crosswalk, counting how many stripes he stepped on. On the road, he tries to memorize the license plates of all the cars and counts how many yellow cars appeared along the way.

Later that day he will forget all these numbers, and never intended to memorize them.

He finds a fence and will do anything to find out what’s on the other side, even if it doesn’t have any interest in his life. He doesn’t care about the result, he just has to go.

There is no reason, but the reason itself.

The world around him is an ode to sound and movement. Industrial sounds, the sound of spray coming out of the paint can, blinding lights, vibrant colors. It feels like he is observing the figures of Tiago Evangelista on the city streets, but with an almost rural calm and liberation. That assured him he could trespass the fence. So he decided to go. He ignored the image of a camera on the red scary “no trespassing” sign and stepped onto the freshly cut grass on the other side.

He looked back and all those shapes and colors could be part of the drawings he makes, with no rules, not trying to impress anyone. He makes them with such ease and detachment, that the shapes are crudely drawn. In his drawings, there is something unusual, like a step. As if we stumble and are no longer sure about what we are observing. As in Martin Paaskesen’s work, where within the recognizable and identifiable, there is a space for doubt. But even so, everything seems real.

He climbed the fence and dwelled in the new landscape. The concrete shapes of the city we’re changing into loose colors. For a moment he thought of ways to apologize in case he was discovered. But deep down he didn’t want to have to explain his motives or his impulses. He didn’t want to obey rules, because in his head everything was allowed. As little sense as it might make to others, this was all his sense. He was so sure of this, that there was no way he could be accused of trespassing.

It was legal trespassing.