Francisco Pinheiro

Work bell / Clock bell, 2015

In the context of his residency Francisco Pinheiro developed a project that employed as a starting point the only existing bell in the palace. This bell is situated in the first terrace of the garden. Its function would have been to punctuate the hours of work and meals of the workmen in what would have been an agricultural land before it became part of the palace.

We can see in Andrei Rublev, a film by Tarkovsky a scene that works as a metaphor of the process of this work by Francisco Pinheiro. In Tarkovsky film, Andrei Rublev, there is a boy that possesses the secret of casting a bell. The entire village depends on that boy in order to craft the much wanted bell. So we watch him supervising the digging of the pit, the selection of the clay, the building of the mold, the firing of the furnaces and the hoisting of the bell.

Finally when the bell rings everyone celebrates, cheering the boy. Work bell / Clock bell is a kinetic sound installation powered by water. Connected to a watering system, every hour for the duration of 2 minutes the water is released falling on a water mill that triggers the movement of a whole sequence of gears which in turn move a small hammer that finally hits the bell. The pace and the number of strikes are similar to a church bell.


BIOGRAPHY

Lisboa, 1981. He graduated in Paiting at Faculdade de Belas Artes de Lisboa (2005) and he got a Master's Degree in Visual Arts at San Francisco Art Institute (2014) EUA as a Fulbright/Carmona e Costa scholarship student. He has regularly exhibited in different galleries, museums and informal spaces from which stand out Módulo - Centro Difusor de Arte, Biblioteca Camões, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas; and more recently at Diego Rivera Gallery, The Lab and 1038 Project Space, in São Francisco, EUA. In 2014 he created the West Coast collective with the artist Luísa Salvador. Lives and works in Lisboa.

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