"Mountain by the Sea"
Galeria de Arte do Casino Estoril | 2017Invitation
Invitation
Text
Once again Diogo Navarro has asked me to paint some introductory words about his new project, which is related to “where the land ends and the sea begins” Canto III of The Lusiads by Luís Vaz de Camões, a portuguese poet from the XVI century.
And it is by resorting to a variable geometry that the wings Diogo uses lift him up to fly over the triangle of Guincho Beach, Cabo da Roca and the Hills of Sintra, or Mountain of the Moon as they were called in olden days as there once stood on these hills a shrine venerating the Moon.
Guincho has walkways that cross its sand, paths that we can imagine carrying on meeting in the Hills, crisscrossing until they reach Cabo da Roca.
The wind here is a permanent feature and in the Hills, and it was in Eugaria that the wind fertilised the horses, according to the Legend that also very nearby led to the birth of the cult to the Holy Spirit.
The film “On Her Majesty’s Service” was filmed there where James Bond saves Countess Teresa de Vincenzo, and more recently “This Side of Resurrection”.
And it is by painting these canvases, as symbolic as encrypted, that Diogo Navarro leads us to imagine what we see and what we do not see, on this side, the land, and on the other side, the sea. Or is it the other way about? The sea on this side and the land on the other?
The moors once visited this borough of Al Qabdar and gave birth to the Çaroi, or today’s Saloios, and where the Luso-Arabic poet Ibn-Mucana was inspired and also spoke of the wind "moving the mills with need for streams", wind that also paints the Guincho sands with colours varying between white and grey.
And then up on the Hills, the feeling of the border between a clear sky on this side and the characteristic mist on the other side, and in the midst of this stand castles, palaces, stories and legends that summon up dreams of beyond the sea.
And the trajectories that Diogo draws, they are but juxtapositions of other trajectories made of ancient tunnels and galleries that cross the Hills at different points and in different directions, making mythical connections with the Hills of Arrábida and Montejunto.
On one of those routes, if Diogo Navarro descends deep into those Holy Hills maybe he’ll find one of the Hundred Gates that lead to the mythical kingdom of Agharta, that lost paradise where the King of the World makes his home.
The Hills crossed by Diogo finally make their way down to Cabo da Roca and sink into the sea, there at the most Western Point of Continental Europe. Here is where the land ends and the sea begins, returning to the principle of this text and Camões.
José Manuel Arrobas
And it is by resorting to a variable geometry that the wings Diogo uses lift him up to fly over the triangle of Guincho Beach, Cabo da Roca and the Hills of Sintra, or Mountain of the Moon as they were called in olden days as there once stood on these hills a shrine venerating the Moon.
Guincho has walkways that cross its sand, paths that we can imagine carrying on meeting in the Hills, crisscrossing until they reach Cabo da Roca.
The wind here is a permanent feature and in the Hills, and it was in Eugaria that the wind fertilised the horses, according to the Legend that also very nearby led to the birth of the cult to the Holy Spirit.
The film “On Her Majesty’s Service” was filmed there where James Bond saves Countess Teresa de Vincenzo, and more recently “This Side of Resurrection”.
And it is by painting these canvases, as symbolic as encrypted, that Diogo Navarro leads us to imagine what we see and what we do not see, on this side, the land, and on the other side, the sea. Or is it the other way about? The sea on this side and the land on the other?
The moors once visited this borough of Al Qabdar and gave birth to the Çaroi, or today’s Saloios, and where the Luso-Arabic poet Ibn-Mucana was inspired and also spoke of the wind "moving the mills with need for streams", wind that also paints the Guincho sands with colours varying between white and grey.
And then up on the Hills, the feeling of the border between a clear sky on this side and the characteristic mist on the other side, and in the midst of this stand castles, palaces, stories and legends that summon up dreams of beyond the sea.
And the trajectories that Diogo draws, they are but juxtapositions of other trajectories made of ancient tunnels and galleries that cross the Hills at different points and in different directions, making mythical connections with the Hills of Arrábida and Montejunto.
On one of those routes, if Diogo Navarro descends deep into those Holy Hills maybe he’ll find one of the Hundred Gates that lead to the mythical kingdom of Agharta, that lost paradise where the King of the World makes his home.
The Hills crossed by Diogo finally make their way down to Cabo da Roca and sink into the sea, there at the most Western Point of Continental Europe. Here is where the land ends and the sea begins, returning to the principle of this text and Camões.
José Manuel Arrobas