Curatorial Text:

Paso Doble
The City Detail

If a line says a lot and in front of it the city unfolds, then the gaze becomes contemplation and the thought becomes flooded with streets, sounds, inhabitants, stories and strolls. In the exhibition Pasodoble, Gaal D. Cohen's work brings together this small, daily part of urban chaos to render it a reflection on what he names: the city full of symbols as clues to finding ourselves, the city not as a specific geographical point, but as transparency and universality. "The city, like nostalgia, is a single idea," wrote Antonio Lobo Antunes.

One by one, Gaal gathers those moments where the gaze of the city dweller might be surprised: a color on the wall, the clean sky, the accuracy of a staircase, the cosmopolitan in a row of mops, the philosophy of the moon trapped in electric cables or the sadness of a dead bird on the beach. This time, behind the photographer's gaze, the city will have to be walked slowly, to the rhythm of contemplation and silence outside of it, as if the countryside or the sea could heal and appease this chaos that makes us city dwellers. Gaal lights the lamp.

Ricardo Duarte

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