Close Distance is both an exhibition and an editorial project by the British writer Adrian Searle about the Portuguese artist Julião Sarmento. Artists, it is often said, always do the same thing, however different their works might look, and even when they swap one medium for another, or seem to change direction or develop in unexpected ways. This is not necessarily a limitation, but more to signal an obsession, even if one cannot always say precisely what that obsession is. Artists, like thinkers, are forever circling the same thing, even when they themselves don't know exactly what it is.
In Adrian Searle words "Sarmento's work has a particular tone, a timbre, a calculated distance, a certain coolness, while its subject matter is the opposite, volatile, 'hot' and unstable. [...] It speaks of sex, violence, the repressed, the unconscionable and the deliberately - provocatively - inexplicable".
This exquisitely conceived and designed book covers the most important methods the artist uses to create his works: painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and film.
