“Rainbow,” a photography exhibition by Paulo Paz at the Santo António da Barra Fort
When sunlight passes through raindrops, light refracts: white light is broken down into the seven colors that compose it. The rainbow reveals what lies beyond the apparent, beyond what we see, beyond light, beyond white: it reveals what white truly is.
Paulo Paz’s “Rainbow” series consists of seven photographs, each named after one of the seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Color is a sensation, a meaning, an emotion. All the images are, naturally, in black and white.
Seven. Each image consists of a collage of seven copies of the same image: Paulo Paz starts with a print, enlarges it on an old photocopier, alters the scale, and incorporates the distortions introduced by the machine. He crumples the sheets, then smooths them out. We see, we feel the creases; he tears one of the vertical sides of the image, overlaps the seven copies with a slight offset, embracing the tear; the last image completes the first. Inside, the image unfolds, extends; it is the same image, constructing a new image.
The photographs are of the same space: the fort, from the terrace, the bastion, the sea, the sky, the horizon, the infinite.
Seven, symbolically, is the number of fullness. The seven colors together form white. The seven fragments, one image. The seven images, the series.
Image:
Title: “Red,” 2020
Registration and more information: fsab@cm-cascais.pt
Organization: Cascais City Council
