Hydraulics of Solids: João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva | 2008

Published 2008 by Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
40 pages
230 x 165mm, softcover, with colour illustrations
Edited by Christina Barton
With essays by Christina Barton, João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva.
Designed by Experimenta
Printed by Printlink
ISBN 1-877309-15-X

'Hydraulics of Solids brings together 14 films by Portuguese artists João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva in a new installation especially designed for the Adam Art Gallery. Sometimes no more than a few seconds in duration, and never more than five minutes long, these films are made with now-rare 16mm colour film stock with no accompanying soundtrack. . .

Gusmão and Paiva are not artists seeking to keep up with the game of contemporary art; their ambition is not for currency in careerist terms, instead they are exploring ideas, using celluloid as their tool. Film in their hands both serves to posit an idea and to test its truth-value. Here art's reflexivity is turned to more abstract purposes, and in doing so regains its critical power as a mode of thought. It is in this last proposition that the timeliness of their project is revealed. For as we move past postmodernism's terminal doubt we are brought to a place where images can again be treated as vehicles of truth, or at least such truth as is revealed in the fabrications of words and pictures.'

— Introduction by Christina Barton