Internacional de Residências: work in progress, Largo das Artes, Rio de Janeiro
The production of images (or almost) is unquestionably the language of Jo Longhurst. Beyond the theme, the artist searches for a series of registrations of gymnasts’ bodies, the possibility of understanding the body as a specific object to be tensioned in space. The body as pure physicality in an architectonic relation with the surroundings, sustained by the power of movement and action. Her work here discovers a new path, since the produced image is not meant to be faithful to its object, resolving to abdicate from the safety of the portrait to produce layers of sensations and textures that are maybe beneath the surface of the observation. The result, stemming from a direct contact with a group of rhythmic gymnastics from Vila Olímpica da Mangueira, is a group of abstractions that, in a sagacious manner, seems to dilute what is seen, provoking a deambulation of the eye and promoting an exotic poetic mist and as much vigour.
Alexandre Sá, September 2015