In Lisbon, the pleasures of coincidence, of serendipity, brought Chris Christoffels & José Roland to discover Rubens’ portrait of Hélène Fourment, among the treasures at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. The iconic painting is a dream climax – the painter and his model, a mythical, emblematic couple. A leitmotiv, a red thread, a mirror effect evoking the great discoveries, shifts in meaning, an open window onto contemporaneity, geniuses, researchers, the famous work by the master of Baroque painting, the great Ambassador of the Golden Age, sacralising the link between present and history. Hélène Fourment, Peter Paul Rubens, love, art, science, economics, diplomacy.

Adventura. Exploradores. Dreams of Eldorado, mental gold, quintessense, journeys of initiation. In front of the Palácio da Bolsa in Porto is the statue of 15th-century Infante Dom Henrique, Henry the Navigator, a patron and initiator of the New World’s discovery. And it was inside the building’s walls that the artists’ Exploradores found its ideal niche. Presented in the form of a dyptych on the right bank of the Douro, the piece evoked the mysteries and complexities of life’s journey.

Look et the Silcence, video installation of Chris Christoffels & José Roland is accompanied by the choreographed sign language of Inès Guerreiro and Pierre Delforge, two young deaf members of Infosourds Bruxelles, which has its own space at Plateau 96. A meditation on the passage of time, the sound of silence, the approaching void, and the relativity of perception, the video's shadow play has inspired a parallel conversation in sign language that is at once poetic and emotion-laden.