From hand to table: notes on Wheat, of João Cruz Malheiro

By Betina Dal Molin Juglair

 

There is no land made without hands, nor people without wheat.

Wheat is at the heart of the dynamic that has nourished and united us since the beginning of times: people gather around it, whether in planting and harvesting it, or in transforming it into flour and bread, or in consuming that bread itself. Always at the center of the table and of gatherings, it accompanies wine, it is the bond that brings together the hand and the earth, the father and the son, the soup and the mouth. Wheat is unity, sharing, multiplication, transformation, it is pure love at the table — and João Cruz Malheiro's sculptural piece, charged with all these symbolisms, is precisely a celebration of this rich universe that Wheat brings together.

After a long cultivation period in the studio, in a practice inspired by the wheat stalks he finds in his way to the studio and backhome, Wheat is nourished by the artist's skilled hands, and now it leaves the oven and goes straight to homes and galleries in Portugal and around the world. João's Wheat could only be made of plaster: a traditional material commonly used in Viana do Castelo, where the artist was born and currently lives. Typically used in architectonic ornamentation, here the plaster assumes the center of the table and acquires both a symbolic and contemporary dimension.

It is João's hand that plants, cares for, and harvests the Wheat in his studio. He puts it upright, carefully binds spike to spike, ties the Wheat with care, and lays it on the table. The artist's piece is imbued with the gestures of the countryside that surrounds him, and so his Wheat is composed by many hands and many images.

Note that if it were just one spike, the Wheat would fall down. It is the strength of the collective that keeps the Wheat standing upright, solid, imposing. It is an existence that is at once singular and multiple, unique and collective—it is the junction of spikes and hands that keeps everything together, yet it subsists as a single entity.

Wheat is an invitation to reflect on the layers of time, the states of matter, and the cycles of life. In its simplicity and grandeur, it contains a concentration of times: if its shape reproduces the spike, just as the wheat is harvested, its image also conveys both the grain and the harvest, the bread and the companionship. A welcoming piece, Wheat takes us to the permanence of the present, but this present also contains the past and the future, in a cycle of transformation and permanence.

WHEAT 

Plaster, brass 

60 x 30 x 30 cm 

Limited edition

WHEAT

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