The art collection of the Museu do Caramulo has been enriched with the work “Não Ver #02” by Fernanda Fragateiro, one of the most significant figures in Portuguese contemporary art. Donated by the artist, the piece was previously presented as part of the exhibition cycle “Black Box – Museu Imaginário”, held at the Museu do Caramulo in 2017.
Dated 2008 and executed in mirror and water-resistant MDF, the work offers the public a profound reflection on the occupation of space and visual perception. Its nature is eminently specular, creating a place of ambiguity and openness towards an imagetic plane that is insubstantial and unstable. In this configuration, the mirror ceases to be merely a surface in which the viewer confronts their own reflection, becoming instead a point of convergence and reflection for the museum itself and for other works, brought together within a virtual plane devoid of autonomous expression.
Through its provisional condition and openness to new presences, intrusions and gazes, the piece emerges as a fundamental element for reflecting on the nature of art and on the ways in which sculpture can generate its own living space.
This creation of virtual spaces is a distinctive feature of Fernanda Fragateiro’s practice, in which the mirror is used as a tool to generate space within space. Through this careful articulation of materials, the artist demonstrates that her sculptures do not merely occupy a physical location, but instead construct their own phenomenology of presentation.
