Introduction

Nuno Rodrigues

The Solar – Cinematic Art Gallery has established itself as a space for experimentation in an artistic field that lies between cinema and the other visual arts and where these are reinvented at the intersection of different artistic expressions. It is in this multidisciplinary territory that a great diversity of exhibition proposals has been developed, in which a strong relationship between the works presented and the specificity of the existing architectural space is a constant feature.

Over the past few years, we have been following a project developed by João Nisa which includes different periods of shooting related with the making of a cinematographic work previously conceived to be presented in different contexts and situations. The specificity of the current project provided the creation of an original exhibition for Solar's space.

First Impressions of a Landscape is an installation made from material shot by João Nisa inside the Águas Livres Aqueduct in Lisbon, which will exist during the period of its presentation at Solar, thus assuming an ephemeral nature. Based on a complex process of capturing images projected by camera obscura devices, the piece takes us back to the origins of landscape representation in painting and in the beginnings of photography. The work developed was translated into a meticulous articulation between the images and sounds captured by João Nisa, later reworked for the gallery context, in a spatial transposition of six cinematographic representations of the landscape, made from six windows of the Águas Livres Aqueduct.

The route conceived for the installation’s presentation proposes different types of relations between the viewer and each projection, and also situations where these images contaminate each other, providing a unique sensorial experience, in which sounds and projections are organized in configurations that are never repeated.