Lou Reed wrote I’ll be your mirror in 1967. It is a song about the pleasure of being whipped or about male prostitution, as other Reed. Nor is a capsule of pure electricity, those who allegedly did the Velvet Underground the root of much of modern American rock. Sung in the concave Nico voice, is a simple and delicate ballad, made to be played on jukebox by adolescents in diners Americans. It’s a love song, the allegorical less explicit that. The first three verses are: “It reflects who you are, if not you may know / I’ll be the wind, the rain and the going down of the sun / The light on your door to show that you are at home.”
I Will Be Your Mirror is also the title of the exhibition of João Louro, the artist chosen by the Ministry of Culture (SEC) and the Arts General Directorate (DGA) to represent Portugal at the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale, which opened Saturday and runs until 22 November.
The artist reproduced the lyrics of Velvet Underground in one of the works in the exhibition: 19 fluorescent lamps covered in black, each containing a verse. Black wires and tangles that come out of both sides of the lamps look like a counterpoint to the metric organized the poem. Despite being the first room, the artist’s intention is that this piece is seen at the end – not only because the viewer’s attention is directed to another work in greater proportions and a more central provision in that space, but also because to exit the display, you need to turn back.
I Will Be Your Mirror is a proposal, less allegorical than explicit (as the song of Velvet ), addressed to the audience: the work of João Louro will be your mirror. This is a desire that has long accompanies the speech and the work of João Louro, 51: contrary to the romantic paradigm of lonely and demiurgic artist calling viewer participation. “The viewer always finish the work. The work, until the viewer is incomplete, “says the artist in his studio, an bunker 500 square meters in the basement of a street in Campo de Ourique, Lisbon neighborhood.
Laurel would leave for Venice then to three days, the last Monday of April. The 14th exhibition of works had gone before, but in the artist’s studio subsisted an extensive descriptive and visual documentation. – Plants, photographs, a model
Ten years ago, João Louro was a guest for collective shows that María de Corral, artistic co-director of this edition of the Venice Biennale, curated. Corral, who was director of the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid in the early 90s, is also the curator of I Will Be Your Mirror . It is the first time that the artist, who emerged in the 1990s, Portugal is officially in Venice. That this choice has been decided “by the State” do not disturb. “I think there is no artist in Portugal which, if sincere, is unwilling to participate in the Venice Biennale as a representative. It is a matter of design. It’s like playing in the national team, “he says.
The focus of the Portuguese participation at the Venice Biennale this year has been the process of selection of João Louro. Contrary to what had been tradition until recently, when the state appointed a trustee / Commissioner who, in turn, chose an artist João Louro performed spontaneously as a candidate for representative at the Venice Biennale.
“I’m in a moment of maturity to be a candidate. As there are no rules – maybe one day there will be – I took in my portfolio and I leave it in the Secretariat of State for Culture, “explains the artist. “After I learned that other people did the same. At one point, there was a pre-selection – do not know how many were there, if they were 10 or 20 – and there were six or seven on the table, including mine. At a later stage, bind me to say that my application had been accepted. “
Laurel says being a Portuguese artist in Venice requires” extra effort “. “We always have to fight our periphery. We not only have to be good; we have to be very good, “he stresses.
Your exhibition occupies six rooms of a Renaissance palace, the Palazzo Loredan in Campo Santo Stefano, which in the previous edition of the Biennale welcomed the Ukrainian representation. The rooms are lined with bookshelves in a library nineteenth century and have Baroque chandeliers in Murano glass. The parts that open and close the exhibition are the ones that were not made specifically for Venice. The first is a photograph dated 2005 entitled Waiting for someone and taken in the area of the Miami airport arrivals. A group of men and women dressed formally wielding placards with the passenger name. Behind them, João Louro holds a poster, also on a name:. Mr. Walter Benjamin
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