​Ana Pais Oliveira

What a unique perspective! and How about to think inside the box? are part of a collection of luxury rugs specially designed for Desistart by the Portuguese visual artist Ana Pais Oliveira. They reflect on the different perspectives a starting point can originate and how ideas that are in a watertight box seem to be as valid as those that leave, flee, wander and eventually return to the starting point. The truth is that we cannot innovate without knowing deeply what has already been done and we cannot surprise without respecting the tradition and the conventional ideas that, somehow, were installed by its force. Creativity is essential everywhere and people ask us to be original, to think outside the box, expand possibilities and contribute with unique perspectives. Maybe what we need is to throw the box away and create our own specificities through the act of experimenting and doing things. In a context of rotation and mutability of knowledge, of information in transit, of forced acceleration of ideas and an almost abusive use of the term creativity, thinking can be hurtful. But, on the other hand, experimenting and thinking through action can save any artistic expression.

 

In What a unique perspective! we can find twelve rugs with different techniques, thicknesses and colors, creating oscillating planes and different perspectives according to the angle of perception, in a three-dimensional thinking. Color is a fundamental composition element that interacts with the idea of the house, always deconstructed and connected to an idea of utopia: a fictional and imaginary architecture is always present in the pictorial space.

 

In How about to think outside the box? the form and concept of the box and the house, as container elements that shelter, protect and impose limits, are used as a representation of the defined space of creation - which can always be transposed or adulterated. There is the intention  to appeal to our desire to experiment and inhabit this space manipulated by color and its relations and tensions, or even to bring it to our own home and comfort place. In this process, colour has a significant transformative potential in our perception of depth, volume and illusion.