Curator Miguel Von Hafe Pérez
16 May - 13 Oct 2019
Boiler Hall
With a career spanning over three decades, Pedro Tudela (Viseu, 1962) cuts across disciplines such as painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and photography. His intervention in the field of sound not only sets him out as a pioneer in the way he approaches them, as an element which is not simply illustrative of or adjacent to his sculpture or installation works, but also as an entity which can develop its own depth and determine conditions for site-specific manifestations.
The title of the exhibition conceived by Pedro Tudela for the Boiler Hall at Tejo Power Station is awdiˈtɔrju – the phonetic transcription of the word auditorium in Portuguese. Even in this transition from a linguistic convention which is not commonly known among the general population, there is a moment of initial oddness which points precisely to the perceptive glide which his work provokes in the viewer.
In reality, the entire Boiler Hall space will become a stage for an immersive experience which combines a sound piece that accompanies three moments throughout which the space is inhabited by one sculpture and two installations, in a meticulously-designed choreography based on elements such as a suspended bell (made specifically for this context) in a fragile balance with wings lying on the ground, seven bell jars dripping into as many black holes, and a hallway of light covered by transparent tiles.
The entire sound movement reverberates in space, in a mapping which has as ethereal as it is physical, manipulating a kaleidoscope of primary sounds taken from playing a series of different bells, later treated digitally from that perceptive architecture which evolves like a space-time music score throughout the entire building.
The idea of working a space like the Boiler Hall at Tejo Power Station, deconstructing its condition as a cathedral of modernity, through destabilising elements of that modernity in the visual arts (and respective disciplinary autonomy), such as light and sound as materials for dematerialising the artistic object, here is turned into a unique experience which simultaneously uses the bells and bell jars as an allegory alerting us to the conditions in which we currently inhabit our natural environment and how we abuse it.
