As Happy As Sad Can Be - Wasted Rita

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Neon light, 39 x 29 x 05 cm, 2017

As Happy As Sad Can Be is a solo exhibition by Portuguese visual artist and illustrator Wasted Rita who is known as activated and instalment distribute her works between her own Blog and multi-social media. The exhibition is shown in 20 October to 18 November in 2017. It's located in Underdogs gallery Lisbon and curated by street artist Vhils aka Alexandre Farto. 

According to the artist, As Happy As Sad Can Be metaphor the idea of image of a dog happily wallowing in a pool of mud, where the artist is the dog, the mud is her negativity and the act of wallowing is her art. The exhibition comprises few different collection of installations set in different corners of the gallery, it's explores the subject about the artist - the energising taste of summer, social media, guilty pleasures and shortcoming of female condition, also, it's opposite, about men.

A LIST OF THINGS THAT LOOK COOLER ON THE INTERNET, INCLUDING INTERNET

Acrylic on Canvas 250x150 cm, 2017

yum yum dates wit ya (left)

cinema light box 100 x 180 x 8 cm, 2017

Catch me if you care (right)

claw crane 171 x 62 x 62 CM, 2017

Angry Girls

Drawing on paper, 20 x 16 cm, 2017

Continuously follow her works in internet since 2011, Wasted Rita always provide a wide angle of her daily life, explore her own biography with the "virtual" audiences, sometimes it's mean, humour, tragedy, ego, emo, punk and smells teen. In As Happy As Sad Can Be, she convey those particular mood of each setting, pastiche of ordinary looking props, clothes, furniture, neon lights, paintings, cinematographic and theatrical feel objects to the scene. 

Photos by UnderDogs Gallery 2017

Even the exhibition divides in cinema alike, bedroom or fictional "Ego"spaces which is created by the artist, there's no doubt about she managed the graphic medium like paintings, poster paints, still in her way with ideal conceptual contents, which is mostly people appreciate about the works, those kidult fonts and careless line spacing is signature. 

It's great to experienced the works and ideas in different medium out of the paper format, the approach of limitations of the gallery, blurs the lines between life and art through different kind of act scene, in some way the works isn't that fit the space, it's not big enough(the objects, the paintings and neon lights) and feel empty, lack of fulfill of the gallery unfortunately, that's the problem that the artist and gallery need to consider about how to make well execution when the works becoming from digital to physicals.

Macau. 100 Years of Photography in The Fundação Oriente

Macau. 100 Years of Photography is a documentary photo exhibition curating by the journalist and editor Rogério Beltrão Coelho in The Fundação Oriente Lisbon. It's exhibiting from 9 November 2017 to 7 January 2018. 

The precious and photographic works showing in Macau. 100 Years of Photography included amateur and professional photographers from Europe like Jules Itier's daguerreotype, which is the earliest photograph and oldest known images in Macau in 1844. Within the photographs and videos, maps and historical archives, the exhibition presenting the region's buildings, landscapes, main local and national events, daily life of Macauese and Portuguese communities.

Jules Itier - Etching(aqua-fortis) based in a daguerreotype.

Carlos Cabral - The Border Gate 1898.

In Carlos Cabral's The Border Gate (1898), a Portuguese arch embracing by trees and buildings which is no idea what it's behind, some blurry nature landscape, unknown and empty. The border gate between Mainland China and the colony in the north of Macau, it is the only land way to the China territory, people passing by the arch to come and go everyday in late 18th century until the mid 19th century. 

Unknown photographer - St. Paul's Ruins, 1890. 

St. Paul's Ruins is the most known landmark in Macau, it was the largest Catholic church and destroyed by a fire in 1835, only the front side of the church, this ruin, stand there since centuries ago, a miracle. In this photographic print, we can't see any people (except the photographer himself in a way) appears and it looks extremely fancy, handsome and surreal under the perfect composition. 

Jose Neves - Hairdresser 1930

Unknown photographer - Cheoc Van Beach, Coloane 1936. 

As Jose Neves's hairdresser (1930) and Cheoc Van Beach (1936) in Coloane Island in Macau, it's documenting Macauese's local customs and conditions, when people still cutting hair in the public, in some narrow humid lanes, or people still swimming and enjoying the summer in the sea, which we only can see these scenes in photographs but not in real anymore if we visit this small town, or used to a fisherman's village, or the city where filling by shiny hotels and huge plastic casinos.

The important value of the photo works presenting in Macau. 100 Years of Photography, it's not about the concept in those old black and white images, the dramatic photographic composition as Magnum photographers, the arty framed its hanging on the museum wall, or the fancy paper print its using, but the currents stayed in these photographs, the time it will never come back again.