Fernando Marante is a visual artist whose experimental work explores the representation attributes of photography. Most of his images are generated with devices custom build, often using electrical engines to add movement to common objects. He's represented by Módulo Gallery in Lisbon and is a part of the Carte Blanche Collective. BIO.

The question concerning the thing (2019)

Starting from the assumption that there is no such thing as an abstract photograph, because every single one has a direct connection to its referent on the physical world, these series of images propose to operate a game: at the same time they search for an identification and they escape from it. We know they are representing a thing, but the image is ambivalent about that thing. They have a disturbed relation with codes and to what they look like. These hypothesis-images, an accumulation of movement and duration, synthesized by the mechanical eye of the photographic camera, exist only as a theoretical possibility in the world of objects. As a visual essay, lending it’s name from Heidegger’s famous course “Die Frage nach dem Ding”, the images are more interested on the question - What is a thing? - than on its answers.

Pierrot le Fou, mixed media photograph (2019)

From where we stand the ground escapes us (2019)

The question concerning the thing, view from Módulo Gallery (September 2019)

work in progress (2020-)

Lupa IV, photograph (2020)

Lupa VIII, photograph (2020)

Making of (2020)

Lupa XIX, photograph (2020)

How to pilot a drone (2019)

How to pilot a drone, photograph (2019)

How to pilot a drone, photograph (2019)

How to pilot a drone, movie extract (2019)

Studies on the possibility of movement (2017-2018)

Making of (2018)

Study on the possibility of movement, mixed media photograph (2018)

This project is all about what the eye cannot see, but the camera can synthesize.  It deals with objects, their changeability and the way images of objects can generate other images (and therefore other objects). Self-referentiality, variation and declination. The apparent, the materiality, the consumer pulsion, the quickly fading lives of the objects we consume and discard. All of us mirrored on these short lived things that surround us.

Study on the possibility of movement, photograph (2018)

Ballet Mécanique (2017-ongoing)

Taking inspiration from Fernand Léger and Geoges Antheil, but also a twisted evocation of Étienne-Jules Marey, this series of images are part of a recurring flow of declinations. The flow of things in space, their pictoral qualities and the amusement about everything time related.

Ballet Mécanique, mixed media photograph (2017)

Ballet Mécanique, mixed media photograph (2017)

Study on the possibility of movement, photograph (2018)

Black hole Red hole (2018)

Black hole Red hole: Black, photograph (2018)

Black hole Red hole: Red, photograph (2018), view from Carpe Diem LACS Cascais (2019)

Black hole Red hole: Black, photograph (2018)

How many images? (2013)

How Many Images do we see each day? 

Our nature is to catalog, assign functions to objects, place them in space and time. In an era loaded with screens we became sharp readers of images, finding patterns in the chaos of image overdose.

And yet the objects shown in these series, seeming familiar to us, resist and elude us.

How many images, photograph (2013)

How many images, photograph (2013)

How many images, photograph (2013)

Photomaton (2018)*

*project presented with Bruno Parente and Rossella Nisio

Photomaton project opening teaser (2018)

Who are these people, what lives did they live? Today we show ourselves continuously;  “here I am” is the message that is iterated over and over. Before digital photography and electronic communication however, the message conveyed by the photographic portrait was, “this is me,” and usually these pictures were sent to distant family and relations.

All that remains is a whirlwind of conjectures, free and for this reason fictional. Contemporary anonymity dissolves us into a society that values individuality, but which at the same time doesn’t record our personal histories.

Photomaton is an instalation of found old ID photos and was shown at Cais do Sodré subway station, in Lisbon.

Photomaton project instalation view (2018)

Photomaton project instalation view (2018)

Objecto Objecto Objecto (2017)

Objecto Objecto Objecto is a self edited artist book about self-referenciallity. The book presents us a visual text of a book while being read.

For that reason, the author has produced two prior books, that were handled and photographed to create the third and final book.

Its pages show the author handling the book, some pages show us, like in a temporal mirror, the image of those same pages being seen. It's as multi-layered handmade edition that fades in and fades out on the experience of being on the exterior of one's own actions.

Objecto Objecto Objecto, artist book, spread view (2017)

Objecto Objecto Objecto, artist book, spread view (2017)

"A “coisa” é o próprio livro e tudo existe nele, dentro e fora. A capa é uma entrada e talvez uma saída, para entrar outra vez. Ela contém segredos (desdobrar a badana e espreitar o interior da capa), lança as “linhas” da proposta, e a geometria da figura entra no interior, o padrão repete-se, fragmenta-se, fora do enquadramento, nas bordas da página, extrema-se como presença, obsessiva e subtil, ao mesmo tempo. Também encontramos o artista dentro do livro, ele próprio o segura, como coisa palpável, coisa existente, admirável mise en abyme que se empreende e projecta de forma livre e expansiva".

*texto Carlota Gonçalves