Adelina Lopes constructs her pieces by associating common objects with materials scattered through our everyday lives. Through this image creation process, the artist establishes a broad dialogue with the viewers of her work. By producing an imitation of water from an acrylic plaque placed besides a tipped over glass, or by using a mirror to reconstruct a previously sectioned stone, Adelina Lopes produces a set of perceptive relations born of the interaction between the materials used, thus creating added symbolic connections over the invented situations. As a process of illusion, this approach to materials and shape leads the viewer to successive acts of optical recreation, making them part of a continuous game of meaning.

Each of her works establishes moments of surprise between the observer and the objects, broadening the scope of possible analyses of the connections evidenced by each situation. As each of her three-dimensional works can be subjected to several readings, we are invited to be an active part in the creative process of their construction. The pieces exposed only come full circle and acquire sense and direction once the observer finds the relational key defined by the associations and arrangement of the materials and objects. When this happens, a door is open, a gateway to multiple denotative solutions which coexist in each piece.

The works we are presenting here are the guardians of a secret of sorts, one that is revealed only to the careful observer, placing the viwer in extraordinary situations of confrontation, which are resolved only through a learning process anchored in each of our individual everyday existences. These works call for an invocation of lived experiences on the part of the viewer. This hiding process feeds on the subtle transformations and modulations that, through the repetition of the glances and gestures we direct at the objects, infiltrate the way we see and perceive them.

In the works Sem Título (dois vidros partidos) [Untitled (two broken glasses)], 2005, Sem Título (dois espelhos partidos) [Untitled (two broken mirrors)] and Sem Título (dois pratos partidos)[Untitled (two broken plates)], 2009, the artist’s intervention transforms and crystallizes a free, accidental and undetermined moment in a rational and carefully planned event. With coldly technological precision, the repetition of this accidental, random moment of fragmentation of materials and plates is taken to the limit, doubling the same division of the composing elements of each piece. The copies of broken acrylic plaques (glasses), mirrors and plates, presented side by side, stimulate processes of comparison and attention, transmitting an ironic view on current mass production models. Aesthetic situations related to such incidents of destruction are recurrent in the work of Adelina Lopes. Deconstruction and cut are executed in a premeditated and restrained manner, and what appears to be an object destroyed by accidental division is rather an instant controlled by the artist. This moment of duplication of the accident refers us to a notion of domination where it is understood that the author of such a destructive act is fully in control of a moment associated to chance. Through this idea, the artist expresses a concept of alternation from a state of unconscious effort to one of conscious intent. It is also important to mention the processes of object reconstitution stemming from the artist’s research on mirrors, in what can be understood as an allegory to the omnipresence of falsification and imitation systems in contemporary image production. The degrees of codification of reality face us with relevant questions regarding what is true or false, the separation of which is ever harder to understand.

In Um Copo [A Glass], 2006, and Sem Título [Untitled], 2009, objects reconstructed through an optical illusion acquire a coherent, usable image, immediately making them liable to be used and manipulated. As they recover their original shape after having had their physicality changed, they now contain a new degree of veracity provided by the reconstruction process, and they recover also their verisimilitude. The work of Adelina Lopes is essentially a complex, varied and ambivalent process of montage. The destruction and/or cuts performed on mirrors, acrylic plaques (glass), plates and stones are finished constructs that express a refusal of the utilitarianism of the original shapes, giving them, at one fell swoop, a new utility and aesthetic function they wish to fulfil, revealing to us the several different levels of authenticity coexisting in them.

We find a striking quest for simplicity and economy of means in the work of Adelina Lopes, in her choice of materials and the uses given to them. Within this context, these elements acquire surprising levels of autonomy and identity. These are, after all, common materials such as acrylic plaques, mirrors, glass, stones, water and a few sculptural pieces representing letters. By analysing the different processes of conjugation and association invoked by her work, we understand how the elements of each piece are transformed into simple means of execution. Through the process of montage the artist uses in different supports (photography and three-dimensional objects), each work overflows its boundaries, conquering new horizons and expanding its meanings, no longer confined. The exhibition is both a territory and a device for the dialogue struck between the viewer and the pieces, amplifying the meanings initially inscribed into the latter. Photographs are an integral part of the montages that originate them, conferring them a visual memory. The process whereby the viewer, the title and the organization of the exhibited elements interact completes the work. We should not assume that the result of this activity is a process of evaluation, in that the viewer is confronted with a totality of surrounding, penetrating and overflowing meanings. In this sense, the exhibition subjects the viewer and transforms them into an agent, identifying and taking advantage of their individuality.

Shape is a key element in the work of Adelina Lopes. If sometimes it is defined by the object that contains or contained it – water in a glass, in a bottle or even a glass-shaped block of ice – at other times its plastic development is structured in reverse, from the object that contains it, as is the case with Copo Vazio [Empty Glass], 2003 and Imagem Cheia [Full Picture], 2008. In the latter, the limits of the photography mould its content and insinuate a shape that is not represented.

In Variações para um Copo [Variations on a Glass], 2004, we detect once again the ambivalence produced by the many possible readings over the photographed pictures, depending on our gaze’s starting point. We can imagine that the object started its aesthetic cycle in one movement: the original glass is destroyed and then reassembled. While it does not maintain its original shape intact, it is present in every picture: the transformations this object underwent are present in each moment captured in the photographs, and the movement of our own gaze accompanies it through these changes, providing a constant but strange sense of narrative coherence.  Understanding of the content of the photographs occurs whence we imagine a shifting of the picture from the intact to the broken glass. This exercise in holistic understanding enriches the piece and allows us to engage creatively with it. The succession of events is organized by our own experience, deriving a logical continuity, organizing these moments in a chronological sequence spanning from the intact to the broken glass, driven by the rational side of our understanding and perception.

This same process of rationalizing by experience when faced with comparable images observed simultaneously happens again when we are confronted with the two broken acrylic plaques (glass) laid side by side, with the two broken mirrors on the floor and with the fragmented plates placed on the wall. The question that arises when we observe these pieces is: which of these elements was broken first? The answer to this question would lead us to a result framed with the sequential and logic perspective we perceive as most natural. There is however a type of ambivalence present in the works of Adelina Lopes other than that which arises from the questioning regarding the chronological sequence of the movement, one concerning the sense of rupture stemming from the irreversibility of the notion of accident, one which the repetition, arrangement and dimension of the fragments imparts us. The starting point for these pieces is a process of subtraction of undetermined factors, a numbing of the accident, and they are presented as a means of planned objectification of the undetermined, and are, therefore, controllable.

In these pieces, the idea of repetition of the original accident suggests an absolute control over all variables in play at the moment of the objects’ destruction. Only such a power would allow for the obtaining of the two sets without resort to some sort of trick. The objects are not distinguishable; they are united by an absolute similarity. They have no differences which, should they exist, would eliminate the possibility of a univocal determination at the moment of fracture; they are separated by a bizarre similitude, which is aesthetically changed in its repeated forms.

The work of Adelina Lopes must be permanently interpreted. This compulsion gives rise to moments of cognitive tension, which lead to processes of suspension and rupture, challenging both previously acquired knowledge and individual systems of understanding that we all assimilate unconsciously. When a routine is unexpectedly broken, we are forced to create interpretative compensation mechanisms, which have us searching for new energies, solutions that amplify our power of concentration, solving questions given rise to by the singular arrangement of the objects presented. It is by using this energy that we try to improve our grasp of what surrounds us and, step by step, consolidates our understanding of the world. Banality is dulling; we need an element of the bizarre, of surprise, a regular meeting with the unexpected, to truly appreciate things.

Concepts of copy and series are both a theme and a formal device in the construction of these pieces. Reproduction places us before some of the fundamental questions in Art, especially those related to the proliferation of technical representations of images and artistic objects. Within this context, we are alerted to the issue of the commercialisation of works of art, in a movable frame of criteria where the borders between art and design are ever more blurred.

In Copos de Vidro [Glass Cups], 2006, we see several shapes of cups over glass plaques, suggesting a mass-produced series. Through the montage of the plaques, the artist explores the idea of mutually influenced images: the transparency of the material allows the viewer to juxtapose the printed images. The viewer is forced into a process of reading and assimilation, identifying and individualizing each of the printed glasses, so that some orientation can be found in the amalgam formed by the accumulation of images on the glass transparency. Looking at the glasses in their meaningless repetition, on several glass plaques arranged seemingly at random stimulates simplifying choice mechanisms similar to those of the consumer society and its processes of cognitive facilitation. These processes lead us to dangerous levels of self-indulgence, making our choices shallow and uncritical.

Repetition as a creative process can be seen as an allegory for the strategy of segmenting consumerism. Repetition, standardization, specialization and the continuous production increase are some of the elements that characterize contemporary markets. This growth based on consumerism needs an ever-growing number of objects meant to broaden the array of choice available to consumers, promoting the multiplication of series and of products with a successively shorter shelf life. Fashion, for example, aimed at very specific market niches, proposes a growing variety of products, diversifying consumer choice and assuring the mass customisation of populations. In this very specific context, we no longer produce in order to sell, but rather we sell in order to produce. The consumer is, in a way, leading the way for the producer.

Commonly used objects, such as a series of glasses of different shapes and sizes, bundled in a set of small glass plaques, are now magically imbued of human meaning and qualify for display in a personal museum of sorts, where the buyer’s desire to possess the object makes them add continuously to the collection. Their purpose is mere accumulation, and, thus framed, their objects acquire an intrinsic value, masking the primary compulsion that originates their acquisition and purging their anguish and insecurities. The consumer cannot let these fetishes go, these objects upon which so much of themselves is invested.

The degradation of the quality of the objects produced, their shortcomings in terms of style, the functional mediocrity of mass-produced products and the creation of standardized and dull products that offer only a limited range of stimuli is to be lamented. We can be excused for thinking the work of Adelina Lopes proposes an implicit critique of the kind of consumerism described by Debord and Goffman, where the forsaking of objects is not seen as a loss but rather as a mere process conductive to the search for new stimuli. Standardised goods, made banal by the repetition of their image, are easily discarded.

Plates, glasses, symbols and stones cut in half and then reassembled by means of a game of mirrors and words repeatedly introduce us to the idea of halves and lead us into a virtual atmosphere of a game where we play with our senses.

In the pieces Pedras Simétricas[Symmetric Stones], 2009, Um Copo [A Glass], 2006, Sem Título [Untitled], 2009, and Uma Pedra [One Stone], Duas Pedras [Two Stones] and Três Pedras [Three Stones], 2006, a cut renders the objects useless and the stones lose their natural shape to fulfil the functions we attribute them. The halves or parts of the objects that have been cut no longer possess their original organic unity, moving on to a level of practical uselessness. The artistic treatment applied restores them to an aesthetic function where the unfathomable distance between an artistic product and any other class of object is self-evident.  Here, the creative gesture is a cut that creates a space of strangeness, a gap between sign and signifier. The title serves as the sign that establishes a narrative justifying the creation of a new reality, while reminiscent of the space it occupied before the artist’s intervention. We see this clearly in the dysfunction between the piece’s signification and the reality of the title. This disturbance cannot be resolved but through an effort of rationalization on the part of the observer: the object lives now, after its destruction, in a new reality. This process leads the viewer to a dialogue whereupon the object is subjected to a permanent restructuring of its meaning, and provides them with an interpretative logic that is multiple in character and necessary to satisfy their want for understanding.

The creative process implied in this practice can be condensed into the image of a glass or of a cut stone. The cut’s section is made to make these objects incoherent, their use or figuration as a natural object no longer possible. A title that describes the artist’s approach to the object, disregarding the effects of such a transformation (Meio Copo [Half Glass] or Pedras Simétricas [Symmetric Stones]), creates a sense of rupture between the piece’s figuration and the explanation suggested by its title, which describes the executed intervention evenly. This process, simple in its essence, aims only to accentuate the difficulties faced when describing these images with the written word. While these are very direct, objective mechanisms, as are those used in the explanations of the figures, objects and interventions of Adelina Lopes, her works contain nonetheless countless possible meanings resulting from the confrontation between two very different fields of communication: images and words. The interaction between images or objects with their respective titles creates points of discord between assimilated reality and the action suggested by the subtitles.

Pedras Simétricas [Symmetric Stones], 2009, is a work of synthesis where the artist perfects some of the processes previously applied to earlier montages. By cutting in half a set of stones of different sizes and colours and placing them on a table, the top of which is a mirror, the artist gives back to these sectioned stones an image of coherence. The missing half is replaced by the symmetric repetition of the object, created by its own reflected image in the mirror. The moment represented here expresses a new paradigm in the body of work of Adelina Lopes and corresponds to a process of integration of several procedures used separately on other pieces, broadening the aesthetic and formal limits of the conducted interventions. A reflected image applied as a reconstruction mechanism for the stones becomes an object-changing strategy, with no loss to its original identity. Thus, the objects are transposed to a new spatial dimension. The surface opened by the reflection in the mirror, acting upon the stones as an integrating space, creates an effect of suspension. We are led to imagine that the elements in this piece are subjected to a kind of extraordinary force that keeps the whole set of energies in play. The tabletop becomes a sidereal space where the stones have no gravity and gain a new plastic dimension resulting from the formal and aesthetic structure developed by the work. The involvement of the viewer is aided by their familiarity with the object, since the montage is laid out on a table. These aspects make for a structuring and integrating result and amplify the connections between meanings explored in earlier moments.

Uma Pedra [One Stone], Duas Pedras [Two Stones] and Três Pedras [Three Stones], 2006, are works that stem from a simple exercise of correlation between the images and their title. This triptych depicts the same stone: intact in the first photograph; sectioned in two halves in the second; divided in three sections (one half and two quarters) in the third and last moment. By choosing for this set of pieces a sequence of titles that establishes a connection with a number and simply counts each of the parts of the sectioned stone, the artist voids other meanings. The original stone, successively divided, is far from its original state but still stone, and the only formal change is a coy move from the singular to the plural. While these stones have been subjected to an aggression that resulted in their fracture, they show no signs of violence on their surface. Seeing the sectioned elements of this stone, where no trace of human intervention is noticeable, we are tempted to assume this is a natural state and create subjective notions to accept the title chosen for this piece. This process is a stimulating exercise on the problem of language as a mechanism of interpretation of reality. It displays the errors and skewing of meaning distorting and deforming reality in processes similar to those that make it possible for the stone to keep its objective identity even after it is subjected to the transformational action that amputates half of its original shape.

In Copo de Água [Glass of Water], 2005, a similar mismatch of meaning is felt when we are faced with the frozen contents of a glass. The object itself no longer exists, but its presence is suggested both by the shape of the ice depicted and by the piece’s title. The same occurs with Um Copo de Água [One Glass of Water], 2005, depicting a bottle with a certain amount of water in it. We must decode this image by a process of interaction between what we observe and the title we read. We then understand that the amount of liquid inside the bottle equals the volume of one glass – one glass of water. In this type of work we perceive the game of interpretation and words that is so characteristic of a relevant part of the body of work of Adelina Lopes.

Ponto de Partida [Starting Point], 2005, is a photograph depicting a black suitcase on a white background. Just by looking at it we feel the absence of any element that could give us an indication of scale or location. The process chosen here intends to amplify the symbolic effect of the object depicted and establish an idea of beginning, the starting point of a journey without destination. Framed within an intense whiteness, the suitcase is shown as a very clear, suspended object. It relates to notions of movement and travel and in this work is the only reference point from whence we can start our own process of understanding. Approaching this odd image lost in the white space that surrounds it is best done in successive moments of observation. We start by seeing a black dot over the whiteness of the picture and find, as we approach it, another shape that gradually develops a symbolic body and weight inversely proportional to our proximity. We’re walking towards a sign, which, as the distance decreases, becomes the image of a suitcase.

Ponto de Partida [Starting Point], 2005, is representative of a way of understanding art, reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray. The author states, “All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.” In this sense, each discovery is the sole responsibility of the individual, and this may lead to resounding failures in our ability to go beyond the merely observable; they are a consequence of the fact that a work is richer if capable of inciting different interpretations and arouse a desire for knowledge.

There is a clear connection between Ponto de Partida [Starting Point] and Sem Título [Untitled], 2006, a sculpture of a suitcase, made of iron and concrete. Although a perfect replica, the type of material used renders the object useless, setting it far from its original function. Shape and texture are conjugated to seduce the viewer who, coming closer, will feel inclined to pick up the object – a gesture so often repeated – only to find that its weight makes it immovable. The suitcase is clearly associated with the notion of mobility and the frustrated attempt to pick it up results in a feeling of incapacity. This impossibility can be compensated by analysing the object, opening new fields of aesthetic understanding to the observer, made easier and suggested by the general context of the exhibition. Thus, the orientation field provided by the exhibited works and the quality of the location where it now exists grant it new functional foundations. A displacement towards an aesthetic notion occurs, one that is radically different to the one we had at first glance, when all there was to be seen was a utilitarian object.

This strangeness transports the figurative suitcase to the realm of subjectivity. As we identify the situation as something outside our everyday experiences, both by the space that frames it and its old-fashioned design, we are led to perceive the object in a different way, setting it definitely apart from the where our first impressions had placed it. From this point on, we have all we need to begin a process of understanding and approximation to the work from this new perspective, made possible by the artist’s creative arbitration. The use of materials in their natural state, such as water and stones, and the minimal use of colour, where white, black and shades of grey are dominant, denotes a will to simplify and bare all. The patent economy of means reveals a desire to remove the author from the communication process implicit in each piece and follows a strategy of subtracting any chromatic elements and formal structures that might create a background noise to the original intent. These elements and structures would lessen the impact of the work on the viewer and render any connection to the work less direct.

This strategy of restraint intends to promote a closer and more direct link, a filtered connection if you will, between the pieces and the viewers, allowing for the development of dynamic dialogues that continuously broaden the limits of the viewer’s understanding in their search for new meanings and interpretations. This effort defies the totalitarian logic underlined by the vast majority of consume relations, fighting the unidirectional sense of communication in market-driven societies. This resistance is akin to the refusal of the notion that people no longer need to speak to each other, and is set in clear opposition of a model of communication in which people live numb and isolated in a world of words without answers.

Water is a profusely developed plastic element in the body of work of Adelina Lopes. Even when playful processes of integration into images and the written word are not representing it, this element is always present, even if indirectly, by referencing accessories associated with it. By evoking a set of symbolic connections, this process of cognitive induction is a constant reminder of its presence. Pieces structured around opposite concepts such as full and empty or half and middle, which are never explicitly present, compel us to use the same mechanism of cognitive induction.

In some of the montages of Adelina Lopes, books appear as supportive elements of creation. It’s a foreign object, an anti-product conceived as an anachronism and framed by a global system of commerce characterized by an intensive production of publications donning the outer signs and status of consumer goods.

In Sem Título (Um ano / Um mês) [Untitled (One year / One month)], 2003, 1087 prints are assembled in two volumes. This piece establishes a confrontation between two books/ objects that have been stripped down of all the characteristics needed to their identification as consumer goods. These objects still have an individual identity, although the information contained in them has been reduced to a minimum.

In the book titled One Year, the artist divided this time frame in days and gave to each printed page a number corresponding to a day, creating a book with three hundred and sixty-five pages. In One Month, time is divided into hours and each page represents one of these units. The ensuing result is two books differentiated by their respective number of pages. These two pieces are intended to strike a process of comparison between them and incite a confrontation based on proximity and dissimilitude. The fact that the piece corresponding to the shorter time span is more voluminous perplexes the viewer by thwarting their expectations. This game of sorts generates a process of logical dysfunction that forces our reasoning to integrate new ideas, in an effort to restructure our ability to understand both objects. Once again, the titles of the pieces are contradictory with their shape, creating a moment of weirdness forcing the viewer to find a solution that allows themto integrate this new experience into their general understanding of things.

This approach to the book’s content, reducing it to a writing establishing only a modicum of communication is enough to transform any deduction we may reach a posteriori, while keeping the quality of the object unchanged. Each book, however bared of a substantial part of what characterizes it, retains its functional identity. Both volumes preserve the image that pins them as utilitarian objects within the frame of the viewer’s interpretation.

These books contain, essentially, time. Inside them, time is presented in countless shapes and different scales: the time the author took to write it, the time each reader took to read it, the time needed for it to be understood, the interval between the moment when it was written and the time when it was read. The possibility granted to each individual to organize their time inside each book according to their own rhythms and sensitivities, gives the user absolute freedom and a very rewarding experience of solitude. The greatness of this subjective dimension created by such freedom allows the reader to compose their own narrative and be an active party in the written content of each book, imagining the possibilities of adaptation which, endless as they are, make of the reading experience a task performed within time itself.

Sem Título (Um ano / Um mês) [Untitled (One year / One month)], 2003, presents a will to supply minimal interpretative references regarding its content. The year or month represented in each of its pages, subdivided respectively in days and hours serves as the guideline that makes the degree of natural criteria applied in its conception. By observing this configuration and by understanding that they are void of the commercial signs that are characteristic of consumer goods, we feel that these books are no longer dependant on brands, or hostages of the search for technical excellence characteristic of the current publishing industry. A book, in what concerns its appearance and as any other product, goes through a thorough process of quality control that assesses its compliance with industry standards, however, there are no rigorous criteria of cultural evaluation to assess and avoid the proliferation of vulgar content. This construction of books without apparent signs of marketing and design sets it apart from commercial techniques and uses minimal amounts of information to explore its core subject.

It is by trial and tentative construction that each book allows the accumulation of new communicational skills, solving errors along that journey of growth. The work of Adelina Lopes is evidence of a search for freedom better understood when we perceive in her work a defence of a book conception and construction practice that is opposed to the rushed processes of mass production, suggesting a learning model that refuses to fit into a brief and fleeting time span its most imaginative elaborations. Richard Senett states that the new world of labour is too mobile to permit that the will to do something well for the sake of doing it right takes root in an individual’s experience through the years or decades. The educational system reiterates this cruel reality, preparing individuals for a work model that favours immediate goals in detriment of depth. By reproducing this type of culture, pervasive in every institution, a political reformer behaves as a consumer in a permanent quest for what is new, uninterested in understanding the proud craftsman who is master of their labour.

Livro Partido [Broken Book], 2003, represents a fractured book in a way that makes us think of loss of unity. Faced with the staging of the accident, which we see as a failed attempt at ordering chaos, we tend to read an apology to the inevitability of chaos and randomness. This is, in fact, the only available road, even if we imagine an all-seeing, all-knowing benevolent witness. The disappearance of the improbable would be the final moment of our history. Individual responsibility is dependant on the impossibility to calculate every consequence of our actions. As Paul Ricoeur put it “because someone is counting on me, I am accountable for my actions to another”

The formation of an individual’s character, like an unchanged attitude before the troubles of existence, is faced with a radical challenge in modern capitalism, a system that irradiates indifference, where people are shattered, not unlike the Broken Book. The configurations of humanity achieved by the dispersal of the several morsels of individual responsibility, which society shatters by means of work specialization, give rise to incoherent beings constructed by reengineering the institutions wherein they are integrated. In this new reality, individuals are treated as disposable beings when they are no longer necessary. These practices reduce a person’s value and their worth before other in a clear and brutal fashion. A shared narrative cannot be found in the fragmented book, as it cannot be found in the current systems of social organization. We all know that when difficulties are not shared, there is no experiential room for history and, unable to conceive a collective destiny, we are left to our own exploits. Such an individual has lost all their existential substance and leads an empty, hollow life, inside a fully charged machine-time purged of unpredictability. Devoid of all risk, we are deprived of the conflicts and antagonisms needed to solidify our memory mechanisms.

Fragmentation is a recurrent element in the work of Adelina Lopes and it holds a critical relation to the permanent need for answers that is imposed upon us by the consumer society. A social model that hungers for the stimulation of a search based on market segmentation, the multiplication of references and the successive output of products whose sole purpose is to fulfil individualist whims. Notions of full and empty serve as a rhetorical structuring aid, sometimes ironically and occasionally subliminally, presented in some of the exhibited pieces. In Um Copo de Água [A Glass of Water], 2005, the use of an idea of measurement in the shape of a half-full bottle intends to create an ambivalence of meanings by arousing the need for reinterpretation and a sense of familiarity. Each work needs closure so that the contradiction between image and title may be resolved. In this sense, the work of art acquires its own dynamic that stimulates the observer and forces them to structure a personal narrative that makes what is observable possible and integrates all the elements in the image interpretable.

We are faced with the same processes of comprehension when we try to interpret images composed by words or letters arranged in a way other than usual. We must restructure our speech patterns to accommodate the intellectual solutions for atypical arrangements suggested by montages formed by letter association. This is the exercise proposed in Four Letters, Untitled, Piled Word, Half Word and Variation on a Letter. This photographic set faces us with distinct organizational models and letter sequencing that introduce a new symbolic reality, different from the written language. Through the interpretative effort underlined by the title of each image, we are led through successive processes of exegesis and understanding.

Marc Augé reflects upon the opposition between full and empty as shades of the concepts of place and non-place; a place should be essentially full. Replete with social meaning, the reiteration of such abundance leads us to define an ideal place as one where everything makes sense. The fact that all movement is – in the case of spaces where a sensory overload is present – immediately interpreted and understood results in a lack of freedom: the creation of an emptiness. The opposition between empty and full can also help qualify non-places. Let us consider, for example, places that have something already seen, because they are repetitions, yes, but also because we have seen them on TV, in magazines or elsewhere. The concepts of full and empty bring us constantly back to the evidence of the now – evidence of what is borne of the too full of images of the too empty of night. Large commercial spaces, including airports, parking lots and highways are in direct contrast with the too empty of night and relate clearly with the concept of full.

The white background that pervades all of the photographic work of Adelina Lopes is revealing of a notion of full that relates to the light of day. However, empty is also present during the day: in empty lots, barren lands, more or less active building sites. These are zones in waiting, which exist only as a function of what is yet to emerge. The fullness of communication, circulation and consume spaces is a fullness of functions associated with emptiness. Adelina Lopes proposes a glance over this relationship between full and empty. The transparency of the materials used (glass, water, acrylic plaques, mirrors) and the use of white express an aptitude to look at the problem of excess and lack of information as if it were a game of contrasts and symbolic deviation. The pieces developed around these notions of full and empty are representative of a return to a reality that is not yet inhabited, where these concepts evolve from the most elementary sensory experiences. This is a world where “full” and “empty” cannot be felt, as we do not occupy the spaces where we move in; only thus can we aspire to feel our body in its vast dimension.

In Four Letters, Untitled, Piled Word, Half Word and Variations on a Letter, we find an implicit game of sophistry with some similarities to common IQ assessment tests. As in other works of the artist, the viewer assumes a complementary role to the work’s structure. The piece’s ultimate meaning requires an apt collaboration on their part to solve the apparent discrepancy between title and picture. Without this decoding, it remains in a sort of existential limbo, a state of interpretative suspension, which prevents it from reaching the absolute moment of aesthetical consummation.

As we discover the connection between the picture and its title, we acquire the necessary skills to undertake other, future tasks of cognitive approximation, from whence we may complete our process of individual perfecting and access other levels of understanding. This knowledge is the result of the realization of the strangeness of the act of seeing. From the moment we see something for the first time, our perception of such a moment is changed with time through a complex process of adding and subtracting where subsequent experiences and the relation we establish with these objects are fundamental agents. This mutation does not need to be rationally understood. According to Wittgenstein, it is the speed of this process that allows us to realize of the unpredictable glow that now hovers over a new feeling, fortuitous as an undisputable imposition forcing us to question the seemingly illogical possibility of, suddenly, an image being seen in two ways. This apparent division of the object, understood as the result of wholly subjective processes, is a revelation that shines a light over its appearance.

It is perhaps worth noting that this quest for meaning by word is surely doomed to fail. We are at a loss from the moment when, in order to access the conundrum “we do not know what is felt, by whom it is felt and why it is felt” we cannot know what is written, who writes it and why it is written. The photos that compose Imagem Cheia [Full Picture], 2008, present the viewer with an image fully taken by the transparency of water, an effect enhanced by its acrylic coating. The flimsy water line defining the top of the picture informs us the piece is transformed into a vessel that blends in with the boundaries of the photo. We are led to believe that this is a depiction of a glass container of sorts where an unstable environment has been artificially created, suggested by the convulsion on the liquid’s surface. Through the decoding of its elements, we continue to establish broad dialogues with these pictures. It is this idea of full that fills the emptiness of this transparency. Taking in the whole surface of the picture, this idea imposes itself to all situations that we might find inscribed on its background, such as the purity of water, the natural environment where it exists or the ecological concern it expresses. Full here comes into view as the powerful white background of the place represented by the photos. In these pieces, being full is an affirmation of transparency. Space refuses us the visual embodiment of our concept. Without body or density, it excludes all other perceptions from our field of analysis. Full and empty resolve each other in a drive of improbability, coercing all other forms to their game of opposites.

The piece Objecto Líquido [Liquid Object], 2009, resumes itself to a glass plaque placed on the floor. Through this object, Adelina Lopes works on an idea of plasticity, associated to a process of minimum intervention. Noticing that the plaque follows the contour of the wall corner where it is placed, as well as all details of the adjacent baseboard, we perceive the glass as a plastic impression. This work requires an adaptation to the specific characteristics of the place for which it is produced; it is a work that derives from a practice of intensive depuration of form and feeling previously alluded to.

Reducing the space of interaction between the artist and her media, we open a broad surface of plastic visibility that can only be credited to the materials that compose the work. Glass and its transparencies do not wish to dispute the space where they are placed. We feel a desire to go back to the principles of minimalism, and the will to develop methodologies that relieve from objective action an artist trying to reduce all procedures to a minimum. Within this pause the author deposits references that establish an aesthetical program for the future. Cancelling the tasks already listed in the artist’s usual protocol – registered in previous pieces – we witness an attempt to achieve a new degree of minimum intervention. Represented by the series Objecto Líquido [Liquid Object], 2009, this moment establishes an effective synthesis of the body of work of Adelina Lopes and announces a new project, one focused on the opposition between instrumental language, hetero-referential and subjected to what we wish to communicate, and an autonomous and opaque language, the main characteristic of which is self-reference.