VUJA DÉ

With the following artists:
Alberto Casais and Gustavo Costa Fernandes.

https://www.artsy.net/viewing-room/ainori-contemporary-art-gallery-vuja-de

text by Linda Morando di Custoza,

We are all familiar with the feeling of deja vu, which is experiencing a new sensation with the impression that we have already experienced it before. However, a less renowned feeling is the one of vuja dé.

The concept of Vuja dé was first discussed by Kurt Kemp in his book “The weird ideas | get”, published in 2007. By Vuja dé refers to the feeling of being in a familiar situation, as if seeing it for the first time. The exhibition Vuja dé takes the public on a new journey through the feeling of Vuja dé, using as a trigger the different perspective of familiar situations present in the works by the American artist Alberto Casais (NYC) and the Portuguese artist Gustavo Costa Fernandes (Porto).

The exhibition ranges from the seductive and contradictory works of the artist Gustavo Costa Fernandes in which familiar scenes are reconstructed in ambiguous codes. lhe photographs that the artist collects become models for his paintings, examples of contemporary scenes in which the grotesque becomes the protagonist. Contradiction and paradox make up the core elements of Gustavos painting, creating ambiguity and interest from the point of view of the viewer.

The contradictory elements also become an initial thrust in Alberto Casals' works, distinguished by their formative simplicity, in which attention to detail and the play of light capture the eye of the public. As in Gustavos paintings, in Alberto's works photography becomes an example from which to translate into painting urban views of New York City, in which beauty and decay intertwine, leading the viewer to a curious tension.

The subject of urban life addressed by the artist becomes the reason for indepth studies: city views animated by the occasional presence of men and cars passing by or stopping indifferent to their surroundings, confirming Casais ability to restore, through analogies between form and feeling, the sense of daily monotony.

The creativity developed by the two artists within extrapolated familiar realities, becomes recognisable to the public (deja vu), capable above all of welcoming provocations (vuja dé).

The figurative painting in oil on canvas presented by the two artists establishes intrinsic connections between the assertive force of form and the scope of feeling, whose analytical rigour with which the image is constructed comes alive with the freshness of an impression.