Vanguard Properties incorporates João Louro's artwork into Dunas Terras da Comporta

From today onwards, Vanguard Properties has another artwork at Terras da Comporta. Having cultivated a close relationship with both contemporary Portuguese art and the artists involved in its projects, the developer decided to challenge João Louro to create a site-specific piece, to be installed near to the Dunas Golf Course Academy and driving range.

Based on a scenario and context seemingly unusual in his work, the artist devised a sculpture entitled ‘Happiness Molecule’, which evokes and establishes an interesting relationship between sport, golf and the things that make the latter different, such as tranquillity, communion with nature, and serotonin, the famous ‘happiness molecule’. All of this is embodied in an impressive piece in lacquered steel that stands over five metres tall and will certainly become a symbol of this recent but already prestigious golf course.

José Cardoso Botelho, CEO of Vanguard Properties, highlighted the importance of this artwork which, although more connected to the development's golfing infrastructure, is part of a wider strategy geared towards turning Terras da Comporta into a huge open-air gallery: ‘We’re extremely proud of this work by João Louro, which we welcome to Dunas Golf Course. This piece of art not only enriches the landscape and the experience of players and those visiting Dunas Terras da Comporta, but it also encapsulates the philosophy that guides golf: a sport that unites man with nature, offering moments of tranquillity and satisfaction.’

In the words of João Louro's, this is a work that ‘peeks into the infinitely small. It’s a work that seeks what is unseen and only the perceived. He created this piece  ‘to share an attraction to what lies beyond what is seen. The happiness that we feel and that arises due to the effect of serotonin can occur when appreciating a landscape, or pursuing a passion, reading a book or viewing a work of art. It could be a garden or a golf course. Happiness isn’t seen, but it’s felt. And this work celebrates the unseen and what fills us with happiness”, Louro adds.

The artist

João Louro was born in Lisbon in 1963, where he lives and works. He studied architecture at the Faculty of Architecture in the capital and painting at the Ar.Co cultural association. His work covers a wide range that includes painting, sculpture, photography and video.

Influenced by minimal and conceptual art, he pays particular attention to the avant-garde of the early 20th century. His work maps a topography of time, with references that are personal but, primarily, generational. He uses language, the written word, as a recurring source, while seeking to revise image in contemporary culture, based on a set of representations and symbols from the collective visual universe.

His reference lexicon includes minimalism, conceptualism, pop culture, structuralism and post-structuralism, authors like Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and artists such as Donald Judd and Barnett Newman.

In 2005, he participated in the Art Experience exhibition at the Italy Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale, which was curated by Maria de Corral, and the Insite 05 - Art Practices in Public Domain project in San Diego (USA) / Tijuana (Mexico). His extensive CV of solo exhibitions in Portugal and abroad includes Runway Car Crashed #2 at the Serralves Museum (1999), La Pensée et l'Erreur at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona (2000), Blind Runner at the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon (2004/2005), My Dark Places at MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (2010), Smuggling at the Elvas Museum of Contemporary Art (2015) and Linguistic Ground Zero at MAAT in Lisbon (2018/2019).

He represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale in 2015 with the exhibition I Will Be Your Mirror | Poems and Problems.