MOLECULE OF HAPPINESS | SEROTONIN, 2023
SEROTONIN IS THE HORMONE KNOWN AS THE MOLECULE OF HAPPINESS
Golf is, in its very essence, a timeless activity and a unique sport that places its players in front of nature within a logic of tranquil resilience. More than the direct opponents, players are up against nature and its invisible and complex subtleties.
This is the thrilling challenge that tests golfers to their limits, in an environment of concentration, in rare moments of tranquillity and communion in which players and nature bond and interact as in no other sport.
This serene but competitive context, made out of willpower and the balance of the club rehearsed a thousand times over, the clear contact with the ball and the stroke falling onto the fairway, composes a symphony of sensorial stimuli that drive the rhythm of this game under the open skies.
Each swing and each well-struck stroke determine the level of satisfaction. The mastery of the game, the expertise, the happiness of the comradeship forged on the field, success, are pure pleasures for the body and the mind.
Playing a round of golf is not only physical exercise nor merely the desire for a result. With each good stroke, a wave of pleasure envelops the player, creating a positive cycle of good feelings and satisfaction. These are the rhythmic oscillations under the blue sky that trigger the release of serotonin, the brain’s neurotransmitter of happiness.
João Louro was born in 1963, in Lisbon, where he lives and works. He studied architecture at the University of Lisbon and painting at the Ar.Co School of Visual Art. João Louro’s body of work encompasses painting, sculpture, photography and video.
João Louro’s work descends from minimal and conceptual art, with special attention to avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. It draws out a topography of time, with references that are personal but mainly they are generational. With regular recourse to language as a source, as well as the written word, he seeks a review of the image in contemporary culture, starting out from a set of representations and symbols from the collective visual universe. Minimalism, conceptualism, Pop culture, structuralism and post-structuralism, authors such as Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Georges Bataille and Blanchot as well as artists like Donald Judd and the ever-present Duchamp, form the reference lexical universe of the artist.
He was the Portuguese representative at the Venice Biennale of 2015, with the exhibition I Will Be Your Mirror | Poems and Problems