Author Description

This first volume of a two-volume edition features a decade of work by Lisbon-born multimedia artist Julião Sarmento, who represented Portugal in the 1997 Venice Biennale. Volume 1 collects series from 1990-1992: "Dias de Escuro e de Luz," "Emma," "O Rostro das Palavras," "Pina," "New York" and "O Percurso do Sol"; volume 2 will focus on Sarmento's text-based paintings, such as "What Makes A Writer Great" (2000-2001), produced as an ironic discourse on the subject. Sarmento in fact has a particular relationship to writing: "I function almost as a writer, not in the classic sense, but simply in the sense of writing with images." Sarmento's expressive, often figurative work addresses this very tension between text and image through a combination of film, video, sound, painting, sculpture and installation, often describing psychologically charged moments of sensuality, voyeurism or transgression.