João Louro's Conceptual Word Games at Christopher Grimes Gallery

Portuguese artist João Louro presented his exhibition "Play, Rec and Pause" at Christopher Grimes Gallery in Santa Monica from September 8 to October 14, 2006. The show continued his series Blind Image and History of Crime, which pair monochrome paintings with captions from film stills or crime photographs. The centerpiece, One Second in the Story of Crime (2006), consists of twenty-four black canvases, each with a text describing a moment in a criminal case—from arrest to execution—and framed in reflective plexiglass. Names like John Dillinger and Butch Cassidy appear alongside lesser-known figures. The title ironically suggests that twenty-four images equal just one second of film. Blind Image features three large black monochromes and one red, with reflective surfaces that incorporate the viewer. Captions describe film scenes, some noir, some erotic, without revealing their source. Rebel Without a Cause (2006) rearranges the four words of its title on a lacquered PVC panel into variations like "A cause without rebel." Louro's conceptual approach, rooted in 1960s language-based art, transforms existing material and invites viewers to construct new meanings.