Boné is an exhibition of dead-synapses*. They are paintings, as always. A painting occupies an empty space on a wall. It stays there until someone replaces it or, in times of turmoil and unrest, throws it out of the window. Holding onto the wall, impassively resisting all blows — among which the most amusing and on the mark, until this day, was the throw of a modest piece of sanitary ware — is one of its greatest achievements, accomplished throughout the centuries with remarkable grace. This will not change. 

If they were made of clay, I would throw them at the wall and leave them as they were: an inch above or below, an inch to the left or to the right, I don’t give a damn. I focus my attention on the inside of the paintings, not on how I present them. Although it has a longer range (and much more flexibility) than most of the ideas we normally find haunting exhibitions, the measuring tape is used in excess and with too much gullibility. Corners and edges, walls inadequately used, too crowded or too lacking: these are not relevant problems. 

I never forget that everything we do will most likely end up in some moldy storage room. And I welcome this more as a relief than as a problem. Time, that ubiquitous and judicious passer-by, will decide what to rescue from the grasp of oblivion — eventually. In this perspective, it is preferable for a work of art to emerge into its public life amid agitation and completely unprotected. 

I have no plausible explanation for the fact that I dedicate most of my time painting rectangles with their vertices cut, or lines that invariably take the longest path to reach their destinations. Why would someone choose to paint, with tireless determination, apples on a table? All possible reasons are valid, besides trying to be plausible. 

But I will not talk about the paintings. One way or another, they will be on the walls. 

José Loureiro, April 2017 

*Sinapsismo, point nr 12