Frame 61February 11, 2020

Theodore Ereira-Guyer

Frame 61February 11, 2020

“There are moments of speed and of slow-time bound in each work.”

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?

Born in Rotherhithe/Bermondsey in London, I work mostly in Lisboa and London, with annual monthly bursts of work in São Paulo, Brazil becoming a more frequent fixture as well. I studied in London with the formulaic route of Central Saint Martins/Byam Shaw, and then the Royal College of Art studying Fine Art: Print. Then after a little break I began my PhD at the Colégio das Artes, Universidade de Coimbra in Portugal.

Each gesture seems instinctive, is your process fast or do you take your time?

Well.. I mostly work in print (obviously not exclusively but even when I paint or sculpt the step by step process of print bleeds in to how I make work. So one of the things I find very important to me in the ‘print’ process — producing woodcuts and etchings — is that it allows me to break down the image-making process into stages. It allows me to consider form, concentrating and working on that. Then, often on a different day in a separate moment, when I come to printing I think about colour more rigorously with the form already laid out. So in a very non-comital answer my images contain both the instinctive as well as the considered slowness of the print process. There are moments of speed and of slow-time bound in each work.

In terms of colour and light, London and Lisbon feel so different. Is your work affected by day-to-day surroundings or are you able to pluck colours from memory?

For me I feel that sometimes memory actually makes colour more vivid and affective. So much of my younger life we travelled back and forth to Portugal, making the trip several times a year and we always had to come back to the UK for work, school what have you. So this longing for elsewhere or this inability to be in a place was always a big fixture of how I moulded myself. This sense that this (Portugal) was always a place to be left, of leaving and with that longing. An impossible place — a space that could never be.

Ones needs are different in each place so those day-to-day surrounding are tantamount to one’s being, personality and sense of self. When I make an artwork in a certain location and context it doesn’t alway transition well. What I need to make in London is very different from what I need in Portugal. London often feels like a reactive space — you see people, you see something, read, watch and then quite quickly you react to it. The seclusion of my studio in Portugal doesn’t operate in the same way — I am not reacting to outward stimuli in the same manner but am more aware of myself because of that.

*Four walls for a new room (Outward), 2019*

You reference ideas with a philosophical and poetic language that points to something more spiritual. As you explore different mediums, does writing ever make its way into your work physically, or is that reserved for the viewer to discover?

Reading is a very important thing in my life and it is the decision or the lack of desire of being a writer than I believe is really important in sustaining that special relationship I feel with the written word. It keeps its aura, its magic appeal.

The relationship of an artwork and title seems to me this beautiful marriage of a knowledge based curiosity, and the human-embodied experience of feelings moving together in symbiosis not in opposition.

If I consider the word ‘spiritual’ I guess I could describe that as a desire or interest in a relationship with the world — its flora and fauna and mysteries. Rather than the primary one of people, and/or society. Or the ‘spiritual’ being a space for the truth of the intangible aspects of our lives.

I feel there is a desire in myself to obfuscate, to create works that I am not wholly aware of. That avoid their own submission. I want to create an artwork that is non-exchangeable. And I mean that in the sense that if the world of finance is about hyper-exchangeablity - where everything has an equivalent value to something else. Poetry is about non-exchangeability, the altering of a world, an accent, a line break gives you a different poem. So when I title work (this is the only way that language is introduced into my work) I want it to continue the openness, and expansive quality, to continue its obfuscation. I wouldn’t create an artwork just for it to be subsumed in the language surrounding it.

So no, text doesn’t make its way into my work physically but I am always drawn to any words the viewer can discover.

In what way does working across different creative processes affect your work?

Working across different media was a way in order to introduce the uncontrolled, or serendipitous dialogues within my practice. Another way for the material culture of artworks to manifest themselves and their intelligence without my limited authorial judgment. This was done with the hope of allowing the artworks to be smarter and contain an intelligence beyond their maker.

By working with sculpture, print, painting and photography this also creates more of a verisimilitude to our every day reality. We live life as a blended composition of images, and objects. So by using this mode of display in the gallery I think it automatically reassures the viewer that they are in a space that is a continuation of outside - their space.

But this working across different media also allows for repeatability while still staying true to the singularity of each event. Each event of making; the time it was made as well as the media and material it was discovered in.

What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?

I love the painter Alfredo Volpi, which produce a feeling of enchantment within me. Maybe even a hope. Vanessa Bell has always stayed with me. Cy Twombly Sculptures at the Gagosian. Milton Avery’s portraits at Victoria Miro in Venice. The poised balance of energy of Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato’s exquisite paintings. Suzan Frecon’s rippled surfaces in her watercolours. The approach to the world that can be found in Patrick Heron’s later paintings as one moves towards the end of life. Carmen Herrera’s colour that stretches into the past and the future. William Blake’s technique. William Crozier’s energy. Giotto’s palette. Varda Caivano’s material knowledge and expertise.

How do you go about naming your work?

I liked the story about Paul Klee painting in the mornings and then naming or thinking of names (and the relationship of artworks and language) in the afternoon. Giving equal time to both the making of the work as well as its naming. I don’t know if this story is true or not. For me I am always writing down titles, sentences, words and often waiting for the artwork to come to the title.

I often use a name or ‘words’ as a beginning.

I find I make works that move towards their own name. As if the work has been made in response to a title. For me words hold the right amount of abstraction, a balance, between being completely separate from the world and of it at the same time. Of being open, general, undetermined as well as utterly specific. So I begin with language - though this isn’t necessarily always the final title.

Rebeca Tamás has written about ‘the power of a name’ and in a book edited by Tamás ‘Spells 21st-Century Occult Poetry’ names have the power of magic, of spells. They transform and influence the universe. They can exert power and control. They can be capable of holding contradictions in their grasp.

The act of naming, of titling ones work can bring in another dimension. In my practice I am interested in addressing a dialogue between the historical and the specific, the collective and individual. This act of naming is one aspect, or tool that I have in exploring how these binaries can push up against each other.

Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?

Well I am in the London Art Fair this week. Launching a box set and exhibition on the 15th of February in Lisboa at Galeria Diferença. Then I am launching a book with Desapê in São Paulo - A Conversation. While in São Paulo I am doing a residency for two months with Hermes Artes Visuais and having a solo-show with the Bridge Project in São Paulo in April. I will be back in London in May/June to exhibit with Elizabeth Xi Bauer.

Artist’s website

Publish date: 11/02/2020
All Images are courtesy of the artist

Frame 61