Eros and Thanatos

We're thrilled to share the opening of Eros and Thanatos, a solo exhibition by Vasco Araújo at Appleton Square, opening next Tuesday, 12 March, at 6 PM.

Eros and Thanatos premises critical thinking about human behavioral codes that reflect the psychological, political, and social relationship of the individual in their diversity of gender, ethnicity, or social class. The performance of bodies, actions, gestures, established social forms is reconsidered through a formal and conceptual installative device associated with Greco-Roman mythology and the sculptural tradition of the 17th century, defining a distinctive aesthetic and discursive space. Drawing extensively from literature, philosophy, as well as classical studies (Ovid, Plato, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Sigmund Freud, Cesare Pavese, José Pedro Serra, Frederico Lourenço), the artist aims to critically expose: the gaze upon the Other; the potential ambiguity of interpersonal relationships; the fragility of taken-for-granted systems; the construction of reality; the relationships between identity and power; sexuality and gender; virtue and the moral duty; the geography of affections and the impulses of desire and passion versus death.

Appleton Square