José Luís Neto
Other
Friday 16 October · until 14 Nov
In the exhibition 'Mask Open', José Luís Neto moves white into the interior of the photographic field, building a space of visual suspension from the interaction between the light of a light box and that reflected by a sheet of photographic paper.
In the history of photography, white occupies a structurally ambiguous position. Although it constitutes a condition of possibility of the image — as support, margin, luminous reserve or background — it is rarely admitted as an autonomous content of representation. Within the photographic image, white tends to be regulated, compensated or reinscribed as a tonal value. In this sense, the technical evolution of photography can be understood, to a large extent, as an effort to preserve tonal differentiation in the face of the possibility of its luminous undifferentiation. Absolute white was thus progressively pushed outside the field of the image, remaining associated with its material limits or with the zones considered surplus to representation, such as the margin, overexposure or the absence of inscription. This work, 'Mask Open', starts from that condition of exclusion and proposes the displacement of white into the interior of the photographic field. Through the interaction between the light emitted by a light box and the light reflected by a white sheet of photographic paper, the work builds a space of visual suspension, momentarily removed from the image proliferation of the external world. In that interval — between emission and reflection, between presence and apparent emptiness — white ceases to operate as absence, limit or technical surplus, asserting itself as the active matter of the photographic experience. 'Mask Open' thus proposes a perceptive pause within photographic language: a moment in which the image withdraws from representation to confront its own conditions of possibility. José Luís Neto. Monday to Saturday, from 14h to 19h. Photography Imago Lisboa Photo.