João Alves, Portugal (1983) is an artist and musician based in Porto. Works actively in illustration, mural, painting, collective actions and workshops. Member of the silkscreen collective Oficina Arara.

LABYRINTH OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS

According to logic, the entrance door directs us to a space that ends as soon as we cross the exit door. Most commonly, the same port has dual function, both to enter and exit. Through the universe conceived in the image and likeness of João Alves, one enters directly through the exit door, animated by the daily life and customs of beings composed of bodies and souls which are ambiguously ectothermal and aerospacial pilgrims of fertile soils and migrants beyond the troposphere and the mesosphere, creatures close to humans and eventually by a Man and sometimes a Woman, fallen angels entertained by their own attraction for Chaos, Mother Moon and Father Sun and other Astral Brothers of this Cosmos and Others. They are notes of the timelessness of the human condition of our world trough more or less rough acrylic brushstrokes, sometimes more often less, in that seemingly controlled naif way, through symbols and forms that by tradition channel deep forces. They are grotesque and brute and even delicate scenes of creatures from this world and the other, in which men are portraited more from the inside than from the outside, making known the fears of their time, the Hell and the notion that the Devil is everywhere, and also within us, or in him, with reference to scenes of his own daily life, always in opposition to the other side, to what is “good”, to that which gives pleasure and happiness, even if it does not appear on screen. Even if the perceptibility is barred, the dance of dualities does not cease, as in the world itself.
As a whole, from his work, observing it at a certain distance and beyond the exhibition hall, we realize a huge self-portrait the size of his own life and more, painted over the years in daily catharsis and exalting ourselves with the versatility of the work.
Let us prepare ourselves to play: we shuffle and place each picture in a determined position in relation to the others in order to get the message that we need to receive, as in a game of Tarot, the true one. The Return, returning to the point of departure (the one before we are intersected by its pictures, the one before entering through the exit door), becomes a quantum possibility: is given to those who have been granted the power to maintain the Great Order. It is not a Fatality, it is a Blessing.
We were blessed by being allowed to see what we do not want or can not see with the naked eye in the paths and curves of the labyrinth of Inconscience (the other side) by tools that are forbidden to logic.

[Cecilia de Fátima, February 2018]

Exhibitions:
PULSAÇÃO collective exhibition at Junta de Freguesia de Aldoar. Porto (2000);
NOVA ASSEMBLAGE installation at Maus Hábitos. Porto (2001);
INCUBADORA, installation at Real Companhia Velha. V. N. Gaia (2002-2007);
JORNADAS PREC installation at Plano b. Porto (2006);
PARASITA installation at Corpus Christi. Gaia (2006);
SIGNIFICANT ACTION installation at Altesfinanzamt project room. Berlin (2010);
CONTRASTE installation at Espaço Ilimitado. Porto (2011);
CRUZSEVLA collective installation at Maus Hábitos. Porto (2015);
PORTA 98 collective exhibition at Porta 98. Porto (2015);
COCONUT SOUND SYSTEM wall painting performance, F.A.R. Ivory Coast (2016);
FRIGASTROPÓFOBIA (as curator/artist) collective exhibition at Rosa Imunda. Porto (2016);
LABIRINTO HUMANO solo exhibition at Galeria Diferença. Lisbon (2017);
RODA DA FORTUNA solo exhibition at Galeria Cruzes Canhoto. Porto (2018);
ARARA collective exhibition, Galeria Zé dos Bois. Lisbon (2018).