Sob o Peso da Ranhura

The exhibition Sob o Peso da Ranhura (Under the Weight of the Groove), by Paula Prates, stems from the artist’s artistic residency at VIARCO – Fábrica Portuguesa de Lápis (Portuguese Pencil Factory) in April 2025. The project is based on the revaluation of fragments of cedar wood discarded in the industrial pencil manufacturing process, which, outside their functional context, reveal an unexpected expressiveness.
These grooves, transformed into graphic and poetic matrices, become structure and symbol: they contain, guide and imprint, but also open up visual paths and rhythms. In the central work, each mark carries the weight of the wood, the hand and the memory. The result is a visual territory where the grooves, made of encounters, deviations and overlaps, construct a fluid path — an imaginary map driven by an intuitive and performative geography. This piece is not just an isolated work, but an antechamber to the floor piece Rasto — a performative drawing constructed in situ at the exhibition “O tempo maior que o tempo” (Time greater than time), currently on display at Pavilhão Branco. In dialogue with the drawing, the video Fluxo reveals an almost invisible moment of its creation. Stripped of its industrial context, the image gains autonomy and approaches abstraction: the gaze no longer recognises the object, but follows the flow — the path of colour, sound and movement that repeats itself without ever being the same.
Paula Prates proposes a reflection on the relationship between matter, memory and gesture, exploring the encounter between manufacturing and artistic creation, where each movement becomes presence and time suspended.