The 2 photographs “Garbage Kiss” and “Lamps Affair” were taken in the area where the artist used to live in Sweden.

“Garbage Kiss” at the same time refers to and antagonizes Brancusi’s sculpture (“The Kiss”), but it is not a sculpture. It is a photograph. The - pre-existent - object that is captured is a pair of garbage bins. Brancusi’s sculpture is alluded to in the title, thus allowing for a possible association of the shapes.

At a visual level, the artist establishes a tension between the small scale of the 2 photographs and the large scale of their frames (with large white cardboard window mounts). Are the photographs too small for the frames? Are the frames too large for the pictures? What if something arises from the dimensional misfit? One thing is for sure, and that is that the frame must be considered a part of the artistic whole. It becomes necessary for the viewer to – physically – come closer to the image in order to look at it, since it is impossible to have a reading of the whole at the distance suggested by the scale of the frame.

The real world image itself changes and is given new conceptual meanings by the artist’s viewpoint, expressed in the title.

In both “Garbage Kiss” and “Lamps Affair”, exterior reality embodies the reality of personal experience and feelings that could not be expressed by words.

Installation view at Sala do Veado in National Museum of Natural History (Lisbon)