ALDEBARAN FALLEN TO THE GROUND
Aldebaran Fallen to the Ground is a series of shaped paintings, with irregular, organic contours. The intensity and incidence of light intrude on the viewing of those (most of them) faces, painted in oil pastels. Hung with leather cords, which contrastingly define geometric shapes, these works are now spread around, now grouped together, and can be seen as a huge installation art piece.
Aldebaran Fallen to the Ground is guided by my experience with Karen Blixen’s extraordinary insights in Seven Gothic Tales and the unpredictable enchantment of the Italian folktales compiled by Italo Calvino, which I have been reading to my daughter as bedtime stories for some years now.
As Máscaras, Wilde Frau and Mulher com Espelho, Apolo & Dafne, A Cabeça no Armário, Os Meninos (after Paolo Ucello), O Anjo and As Aias: into these groups the paintings have been assembled. Among them, we find Sombras. Sombras are drawings in Indian ink on tracing paper, in various sizes and irregular shapes, that can be seen throughout the exhibition and provide it with a foundation: they are the shadows of the paintings, but these shadows have a life of their own.
Aldebaran Fallen to the Ground is also a short film: a spoken text that appears to be an endless fairy tale clashes with an ancient collection of film stills, pictures of actors and actresses from days gone by, just as in fairy tales; burnt idols. Comic and dramatic, this near-hypnotic, highly visual film also features the voluptuous forms of the paintings as characters.
Aldebaran Fallen to the Ground is like a dream, a sort of journey.
“‘Madame,’ (...) ‘once upon a time I happened to be in a prison. There I could not see the stars, but I used to dream about them. I dreamed that because I could not watch them they were running wild all over heaven, and the shepherds and the camelherds driving their flocks at night would lose their way. I even once dreamed about you, Madame, and that when I found the star Aldebaran fallen from the sky, I picked it up and gave it to you.”
Karen Blixen, “The Roads Round Pisa”, Seven Gothic Tales (1934, 1961), Vintage Books, 1972.
Adriana Molder
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Adriana Molder Born in Lisbon in 1975. Lives and works in Lisbon.
Recognized for her large-scale drawings in India ink on sketch paper, the figures portrayed by Adriana Molder oscillate between dreams, phantasmagoria and reality. The conceptual focal point of her work is the significance of the face as a symbol in contemporary imagery. She has produced several series of portraits inspired by iconographic figures in popular culture, cinema, and art history, always with a strong connection to literature. Molder’s drawings and paintings also by choice of subject create an instant familiarity between the viewer and her work, making it both relevant and accessible.
As we look at the entirety of her oeuvre, we are faced with a gallery of figures which combine elements of portraitist fidelity with fictional or narrative inventiveness, while over the whole hangs something we will call an atmospheric quality, to avoid calling it an aura. An atmosphere that turns representation into memory, where the separation between picture and viewer becomes irreversible, leading to the inevitability of the almost soft passing of a shadow of death.
Adriana Molder took the course in Stage Design at the Theater and Cinema School at the National Conservatory, and Drawing, Advanced Visual Arts and Individual Project at Ar.Co, in Lisbon. She participated in international residencies such as the Budapest Galeria (Budapest) and was an artist in residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin) in 2007, the year in which she was awarded the Herbert Zapp Revelation Prize for Visual Arts in Berlin, where she would reside for thirteen years. Previously, while still in Lisbon, she won the Celpa/Vieira da Silva Revelation in Visual Arts award in 2003. Adriana Molder has exhibited her work in Portugal and abroad since 2002. Among her solo exhibitions, the following stand out: 2025 “Aldebaran Fallen on the Ground”, MNAC National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon, “Antares”, Galeria Municipal Torreão Nascente da Cordoaria Nacional, Lisbon; 2023, “Serpentina”, School of Arts, UCP, Porto, 2022; “Mirror”, Gallery 111, Lisbon, Portugal; 2021, “My Face Is Here in the Wildfire”, Winter Garden, São Luiz Theater, Lisbon, Portugal; 2018, All of Ford Photographs, Travessa da Ermida project, Lisbon, Portugal; 2014, The Light on the Heart, Art Plural Gallery, Singapore; 2012, in an original project conceived with Paula Rego “The Goatfoot Lady, Paula Rego and Adriana Molder”, Casa das Histórias- Paula Rego, Cascais, Portugal; 2011, “Winter Was Hard”, Beck & Eggeling new quarters, Düsseldorf, Germany; 2009, “We have faces!”, DSV Kunstkontor, Stuttgart, Germany; “V” Arpad Szenes Vieira da Silva Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal; 2007, “Der Traumdeuter”, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; 2007 “The Dawn of Wilhelm and Leopoldine”, Carmona and Costa Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal; 2006, “Hotel”, Fruehsorge Gallery for Drawing, Berlin, Germany; 2003, “Copycat”, Sacred Art Museum of Funchal, Funchal, Portugal; 2002, “Ice Chamber”, Sintra Museum of Modern Art — Berardo Collection.
Her work is represented in several collections, private and public, in Portugal and abroad, including Novo Banco, António Cachola Collection, Berardo Collection, Figueiredo Ribeiro Collection, Union Fenosa and Kupferstichkabinett - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Between 2020 and 2024, she directed the exhibition project Galeria da Casa A. Molder in Lisbon, at August Molder's Loja com História Filatelia A. Molder.
