Filipe Marques: PANDEMIC—I don’t know Karate but I know Ka-Razor!

Curated by Isabeli Santiago & Juan Luis Toboso.

PANDEMIC—I Don’t Know Karate But I Know Ka-razor takes us to a ground zero state to confront issues such as the fragility and finitude of bodies, the disease-sanity binomial and the struggles rooted in the world and in nature. This exhibition, which results from an invitation made by the Galeria Municipal do Porto to the artist in 2019, to question viral concepts that permeate his work, acquires an evident relevance in the context of today’s current global pandemic crisis.

The exhibition project reflects the poetic and apocalyptic complexity imprinted in Filipe Marques’ language, through which the spectators are led to a potential realization of the impotence of the human condition, our impossibility of controlling invisible contaminations and balancing forces and resistances.

Based on concepts from modern philosophy and texts from the classical antiquity, we are challenged to understand the constant contradictions of humanity. Through stimuli, signs and metaphors about failure and self-destruction, which the artist in his frailty does not want to escape, arises an invitation to participate in a speculative exercise unfolding in a contemporary reflection that becomes urgent, collective and political.

Filipe Marques graduated from the Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto and from the Kunstakademie, in Düsseldorf. His work, presented in solo and group exhibitions in Portugal and abroad, departs from the theories of modern philosophers who problematize humanism, in a constant questioning and inquiry about the world and life.

Juan Luis Toboso is the Senior Curator of Galeria Municipal do Porto. 

Isabeli Santiago is the Curatorial Assistant of Galeria Municipal do Porto. 

For media inquiries: Hernâni Baptista, hernanibatista [​at​] agoraporto.pt / Tiago Dias dos Santos, tiagosantos [​at​] agoraporto.pt