These will be portable [...] objects of a nomadic civilization in the transition to a sedentary life.

Bruce Paulino da Silva

Café Estoril is one of those places that survive beyond all expectations, resisting the pressure of the dumb, immoderate desire to modernise everything. Its counter is a living metaphor for a democratic, generous three-hun-dred-and-sixty-degree service. On its shelves and cabinets, we can find products with expiration dates that are best kept secret. Its reduced clientele are the last remnants of what was once a fierce community of proletarians, alcoholics, hardworking people hankering for their caffeine boost, prostitutes, and the occasional dandy.
Estoril. The bitter fizzle of Juan Carlos’s ghost (will the poor fool ever go back?) and the chimeras of exclusivity, now embroidered with the excruciating poverty of the so- called ‘problematic neighbourhoods’.
Bruce Paulino da Silva infiltrates the daily life of these inert objects in the shop windows, cabinets and shelves of Café Estoril with a series of small pieces: minimal paint- ings, they look like pieces of stucco left by another victim of urban redevelopment. Are these the poignant memories of houses that have lost their living and historic linings in fa- vour of drywall and Ikea? Next to the Bic pen, contrasting with the Duracell batteries or rivalling the Johnny Walker bottles, they are anti-monuments of particular relevance.
As delicate as they are rude, they produce a sensitive simulacrum of seemingly rocky formations encompassed by an intrusive and defying neighbourhood. They are im- peccably arranged within a fold of suspended time, in this (fortunately) forgotten corner, that still manages to elude the ogres of real estate.

Miguel Von Hafe Pérez