BLIND HANDS (2023)
A Multimedia Arts Exhibition by David Swartz
The artist goes to sleep with a paintbrush in his hand, makes things without knowing what he’s making, moves without seeing where he’s going. His creative life is a dream.
Landscape intermediate
Between dreams and land.
The wind slept, calm‑fanned.
The waters were weedy at
Where we plunged our hand.We let the hand wander
In the water unseen…— from “The Mad Fiddler” by Fernando Pessoa, 1910-1917
At this event, visual artist and translator David Swartz presents his translation of ORPHEU LITERARY QUARTERLY Volumes 1 & 2 (1915), his film version of THE SEAFARER by Fernando Pessoa, and various sculptures made by the translator without looking.
THE SEAFARER was filmed in a medieval cistern located beneath the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lisbon (FBAUL). It features Mariana Meneses, Dullier Correia, & Maria Cabral.
ORPHEU LITERARY QUARTERLY Volumes 1 & 2 (1915) was published by New Meridian Arts in 2022. It contains a Preface and Biographical Sketches of the Orpheu poets by Nuno Júdice.
“Properly speaking, ORPHEU is an exile of artistic temperaments seeking art as secrecy or torment…
Our intent is to materialize, as a group or idea, a determined number of revelations in thought or art, that, based on this aristocratic principle, find in ORPHEU, their esoteric ideal, ingrained in the way we feel and know ourselves.”
— Luis de Montalvôr (from the “Introduction” to Orpheu Literary Quarterly Volume 1)
I feel that your hands are your vanquished eyes
Your eyes that in forgetting the prayers of the light
Become cloisters erasing the forgotten steps
Of God returning from shrouding Jesus.— from BLIND HANDS by Alfredo Pedro Guisado
Orpheu Literary Quarterly Volume 1 (1915)
David Swartz is born and raised in Toronto. He moved to Lisbon, Portugal in 2014 where he studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon (“The Hands’ Self-Reflection”, MFA, 2016) and Literary Studies at NOVA University Lisbon (“Shake-speares Tenth Muse: The Will To Nothing”, PhD, 2022). His publications include two translations from Portuguese: The Religious Mantle by Nuno Júdice (New Meridian Arts, 2019) and Orpheu Literary Quarterly Volumes 1 & 2 (New Meridian Arts, 2022).
Opened from February 13rd to 17th, 2023.
Please contact Gallery 1265 for potential exhibition archival.
This exhibition is supported by CETAPS.
