Photo: Ernesto Rodrigues with Valérie Métivier

Imagine a blank surface. Now think how it would look if you cut with a knife some traces and little holes on it. You have a visual texture now, something to see but at the same time something that reminds you of the nothingness of the surface. That's exactly that what Ernesto Rodrigues, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Guilherme Rodrigues and Margarida Garcia do with silence. Their knives are sounds - the "incognito" sounds that a conventional musical instrument can produce, even if it's impossible to notate them - and what they do is textures. Maybe you don't want to call painting a texture made with a knife (or maybe you do), and this quartet is indifferent to the doubt if this is or isn't music. The question isn't really important, and you must know by now that there's an imense artistic territory to explore before music and after music - music is only one way to do... well, let's call it music. Ernesto says, amused, that «Cesura» (one of the Portuguese words to say "cut") is his less musical work. Amused, certainly, but with the subversive feeling of someone carrying a knife in the hand. Rui Eduardo Paes