Pálpebra I is part of the weight-lightness dichotomy that characterises the work of the Portuguese artist Rui Chafes, and this work reveals a strangeness that comes from its shape, and due to the colour black, its “mourning condition”. The iron sculpture, suspended, explores the absence of a body and seems to be the protective space of a metamorphosis, or a passage into new realms of identity. Faced with the difficulty or impossibility to find a formal referent, the spectator may, however, have the glimpse of the “silhouette” of a body that has already disappeared, where the upper structure opposes the lower: metallic lines support a mesh of shadows.
Also, the title, the word, an element that suggests the lightness of thought, may open way to an experience, the emotion of which overcomes the apprehension of shapes. In that sense, the movement of the eyelid is also weightless, opening or closing our eyes to the world; and weightless is the truth of the work, the revelation of a beauty that should be “seen” and felt with closed eyes.

José Carlos Pereira