Written by Water

Marco GODINHO

“Written by Water”


On the occasion of his first solo exhibition at LMNO, Marco GODINHO, (born in Portugal in 1978, living between Paris and Luxemburg), presents a selection of recent works. His work takes a keen interest in the experience of both tangible and imperceptible limits within our space-time. His work is suffused by the idea of exile, of a geography fashioned by the intimate and by the fortunes of life.

Simple gestures are prevalent. As an heir of conceptual artists he sets process at the very centre of his artistic practice. Free, nomadic modalities which become the tools of his thinking. Recording traces of actions, which manifest themselves as transitory states and are so many gestures that he continues to accomplish wherever his travels take him. Gestures that he carries out as his travels move him.
The works presented in this exhibition have in common the relationship they maintain with invisible phenomena or natural elements.
The works use fire, snow, sea water, salt, wind, humidity, the passage of time and weather forecasts as the material of their exploration. But walking, wandering and moving are also omnipresent.

At the entrance to the gallery there is a number 8, the exact copy of the number on the artist’s house in Luxemburg. Tilted horizontally, it evokes the symbol of the infinite. This almost invisible gesture introduces thematics such as public and private space (as the artist has the same piece on the façade of his house), housing conditions, invisibility.

The title of the exhibition “Written by Water”, is that of a project started as early as 2013. This is a matter of assembling a collection of invisible narratives written by the Mediterranean. The artist immerses in it some notebooks which the water will transform into so many stories written in a






script that has become indecipherable.
The title also induces, as soon as one starts reading, an imaginary realm round water, disappearance, winds, fluid circulation of flows
movements in the atmosphere, uncertainty. But this title also implies the air, the idea of feeling the various intensities of our environment. The idea that the wind, like water, can both stroke and strike. In what way do those elements condition our inner body, an intimate space?  

The other pieces alternately call to mind notions such as time, the history of materials, roots, literature, multiple cultural and social influences and also shed light on the modalities of the artist’s work. For several years now Marco Godinho has developed an in situ practice, taking account of the economic and ecological data of the production of his work. Thus the majority of the works presented are created anew on-site or made from recycled materials.  


“I have been conducting for a number of years a sensible exploration of questions of exile, immigration and geography. This thinking is fed by the experience of a nomadic life, caught between several languages, affected by constant moves mixing various cultural and social influences, cut across by the presence of literature, philosophy and poetry.
My works draw the map of a world fashioned by biographical and multicultural personal trajectories. They stimulate constant receptiveness and curiosity towards what surrounds us,  procedures of active engagement and an unreserved open-mindedness towards the context in which one is led to live, to work. No longer can a person belong to one land, one nation, one language only.”