Girl Meets Boy is a site-specific project made for the two windows of Gira Pratos restaurant, situated in the same street of Lab 65 gallery, in Porto. Following an invitation by both venues, Julio Dolbeth, illustrator and designer of Gira Pratos, and Rita Castro Neves, Lab65 artist, propose to work collaboratively with materials commonly used in advertising, such as photography, vinyl stickers and light boxes.

The work derives from the idea of the restaurant as a place of seduction where protocol is to be observed, as expected in a public space. Girl Meets Boy is a visual fantasy – just as photography is a construction of the real with the appearance of reality. The fantasy is of one’s self-image and of the expected gestures from a couple in their first meeting.

Two photographs are shown inside the restaurant logo, lit from behind with simple white bulbs. The two portraits are of ourselves, one in each window: the boy drinks from a glass while wine splits down his white t-shirt and the girl holds a white napkin in her mouth full of smeared red lipstick. Portraying gestures and choosing elements connected with the idea of a restaurant we both make reference to the psychoanalytical approach to red wine and red lipstick as substitutes for blood and to the common socially accepted view of them as symbols for seduction, casualness and self-transformation.

On the other hand these images of expectation, promise and fantasy clearly reference typical cool fashion photography as a conventional way of producing attractive images, as well as they mock with the idea of the artist itself as an object of desire. In the opening night this was enhanced by throwing a party with an informal mix of DJeying of some of the coolest DJ’s of the moment in Porto – our friends of course.

The circular photos are stuck to the glass with vinyl stickers from the inside of the restaurant. The stickers are of primary colours and of equally clichéd shapes (a VISA biscuit, a skull, a dog, a cloud, an ice-cream, cherries…). The lighting of the work is so that from the inside one sees the stickers and from the outside the photographs, exploring once more the duality of the piece (collaboration of two venues, collaboration of two artists, two sex genres, two windows, two fantasies…).

When a girl meets a boy things can go wrong in a seductive gore waltz of our contemporary image times.