Patrícia Rosas // Esculturas de terra, água, fogo, ar VII.

In Nuno Vicente work’s, Nature (physis , natura ) isn’t  perceived as a unique and global form, but rather reflected on a higher level of culture, genre, class, biologic evolution, etc., in a complex net of physical and social relations. A multiplicity of connections between time, space and environment, by the continuous process of becoming, allows this change in Nature. Thus, the paradigm of the concept of Nature, also in constant change and actualization, is reflected in his works.
In effect, stepping from a heritage that in the 1960’s sees its apogee through the artists of the so-called Land Art, a period when plants, animals and a close interest to ecology are intensified in the artistic practice, Nuno Vicente produces works that are in direct relation with nature, materialized through the gathering of natural materials, such as in the work called Diary Notes – 12 Thoughts on Nature Translated into Electric Signals Sent to the Air , made of twelve speakers with insects or vegetable elements on it.
Contact with nature in the process of ephemeral operations is represented on Gravity – Fossils of Leaves Hanged in a Forest . The several visits to Grunewald forest, on environs of Berlin, culminated in 80 slides registering these actions, marked by the very weather conditions. Also the time length itself was essential to the work’s making.
The perpetuation of the past, or of a memory preserved in nature, is a primordial topic on the artist’s work. The Big Fossil  consists in a three meters panel which has in its genesis fossils from different sites and periods, which were smashed and reduced to dust. In this dust time and space are unified. Afterwards, this dust was diluted in quick gestures and several layers on paper, into an apparently monochromatic shade,with constant hints of ocher and earth-like shades of brown, thus making justice to the latin term fossilis , which means “unearthed”, “brought up out of the earth”.
The 30 black and white pictures that make part of Homage to Ilya Prigogine – Skype Rocking of Fossils onto Water  hold a particular moment, an action in which the artist plays the lead role, thus homaging the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which put an end to a scientific determinism, turning back to Darwin and to the idea of an aleatory, evolutive and self-organized nature which heads towards increasingly complex stages, theories which the artist follows.
Nuno Vicente exhibited the remaining parts of the series Sculptures of earth, fire, water, air  during 2012 and 2013, in Berlin, closing the cycle in Lisbon, and always in a constant interaction between artists and curators, since all his exhibitions allowed this enriching relationship.

Patrícia Rosas, 2014