Galeria Fortes Vilaça is pleased to present the exhibition "Image & Action", which brings together works in video by six artists from the gallery's team: Damián Ortega, Janaina Tschäpe, John Bock, José Antonio Hernández-Diez, Sara Ramo, and Tiago Carneiro da Cunha. The obvious relation between the title and images in movement reveals subtleties when the works are seen side by side.

Action is the keyword. Action is transmuted into acting when the artists are the subjects of their own videos. This is the case of Driving in Caracas (Conduzindo em Caracas, 2003), by José Antonio Hernández-Diez, a sculpture with video, exhibited in the 49th Venice Biennial in 2003, which registers, in a B movie atmosphere, a nocturnal excursion by the artist in the Venezuelan capital. José Antonio was drunk, drugged, without proper documents, and driving a broken-down car throughout the city, but was never stopped by the police. In a register closer to theater, characteristic of his work, the German John Bock drove a tractor through a rural landscape in Trecker, 2003. In her recent Entre a chuva e o boneco de Neve ("Between the rain and the Snow Man, 2005"), Sara Ramo created an allegory of time-space with an animation in which balls of paper turn to stone and vice-versa. The action takes place in a field, with markings in a format similar to a sports field. Ramo enters the scene trying to revert the process she herself created, an image that reflects on the position of the artist in the process of creation.

In Planeta Salvaje ("Wild Planet", 2001), Damián Ortega imprints the movement of meteors onto ordinary, static stones that come to life through an edition in a frenetic rhythm that juxtaposes colors and formats in a silent and abstract video of great visual impact.

Action is the movement of a body/sculpture in Exercícios ("Exercises", 2002), by Janaina Tschape, a sequence of 8 one-minute loops in which different women perform a movement repeatedly. Then in the video Low attention span|high curiosity rate [Portrait of Peter Elliot], 2000, by Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, the movement of the body approximates man and primate. For 40 minutes da Cunha recorded the performance of an actor who is a professional imitator of gorillas. Dressed in civil clothes, acting in a "neutral" set with a white backdrop and three colored pedestals, our gorilla man is impressive in the perfection of his performance. Action here is reflection on the ambivalent nature of the relation between conscious and unconscious.