The most recent project of Portuguese architect and photographer Francisco Ricarte was presented earlier this month at the Art For All Society at the Macau Art Garden. Entitled Dark Matter, the exhibition presented a set of 12 photographs captured in Coloane in early 2021. With his new work, the photographer hopes to make audiences aware that there may be unexpected ways to experience a territory like Macau in particularly challenging times.
“I hope that the exhibition will provoke visitors to reflect on the situation of confinement in which we have been living in recent years. There is a ‘here’ and a ‘there’, not always easily reachable,” says the photographer.
Ricarte notes that to a certain extent, the photos “seek to ‘hide’ more than they offer something to ‘see’”.
“The shadows, the dominant dark tones, as well as what is only glimpsed, may be understood as what is immaterial or sensitive that surrounds us. The images thus refer us to something we feel, but do not see – a nostalgia, or a memory of something we cannot reach – in short, a ‘dark matter’ that, like the Universe, we know exists, but do not see and indelibly shapes us,” explains the 66-year-old. “This series is an allegory that highlights an emotion about how the current situation has made us live in Macau”.
Curated by local artist Alice Kok, the exhibition is the first part of AFA’s annual project entitled As Within, So Without – The Art of Imagery Exhibition Series.
“The worldwide pandemic situation has plunged the artist into a deep reflection on his own environment and, perhaps more importantly, on the possibilities of the unknowable. The series of photographs were all taken in daylight in Coloane by the Macau waterfront to the sea, with a deliberate lowering of the exposure level thus creating a mysterious atmosphere of darkness under the sun,” writes the curator in her description of the exhibition.
For Ricarte, Macau has become a “territory in itself” for its residents.
“The nature trails of Coloane and the surrounding sea have acquired a new meaning, highlighting the ‘here’, where the perception of the existing landscape is metaphorically expressed by the black or dark blue colour and the appearance of shadows against the sea,” the photographer notes.
Alice Kok, a confessed admirer of the literary work The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, highlights his famous phrase “what is essential is invisible to the eye”.
“Dark matter refers to a component of the universe whose presence is discerned by its gravitational pull rather than its luminosity. Dark matter makes up 30.1% of the matter-energy composition of the universe; the rest is dark energy (69.4%) and “ordinary” visible matter (0.5%),” notes Alice.
“Through a personal perception of space, the ‘inner places’ are darkened and shown as shadows, while the ‘outer places’ are seen, yet distant,” adds the curator and head of AFA. “I would venture to call the dark matter an ‘Impossible Landscape’. It is a landscape that cannot be built by an architect because it can only be offered by the magical nature of light and the poetic mind of an artist, who seeks the perfect image by opening the shutter from the depths of his mind,” she observes.
Before becoming a professional architect, Francisco Ricarte took up photography at the age of 21, in the 1970s, when he was presented with his first reflex camera. Since then, he has been using the medium as an expression of his own vision of his surroundings. In 2006, he moved to Macau and has worked as a project manager in architecture until today. In recent years, Ricarte has participated in several collective exhibitions where he presented his photographic works based mainly on the themes of landscape and architecture. He recently became a founding member and vice-president of the newly established local photography association Halftone.
