Welcome to Cristina Guerra Newsletter October 2016.
ONGOING EXHIBITIONS
Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Portugal
EDGAR MARTINS
Silloquies and soliloquies on death,
life and other interludes.
Closing 29 October
Siloquies e soliloquies on death, life and other interludes is the latest work of Edgar Martins. This project was developed in partnership with the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, Portugal, between 2013 and 2016.
This project proposes to scrutinise, expose and hold in tensions many of the contradictions and problems inherent in the depiction and conceptualisation of death, in particular, violent death, whilst reflecting at the same time about Photography's role in this process. Siloquies and soliloquies on death, life and other interludes is a project that views Photography as a hybrid medium, structured around conceptual tensions, allowing us, therefore, to be confronted with the fragility of our perceptual and cognitive systems.
This body of work forms part of a cross-sectoral project that includes a myriad of public events such as talks and discussion forums, including a tour of unique but complementary exhibitions in institutions such as Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool, Jan-Mar 2016), MAAT (Lisbon, Jun-Oct 2016), Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art (Lisbon, Sep-Oct 2016) and the international Centre of Art José de Guimarães (Guimarães, Jan-Apr 2017).
UPCOMING EXHIBITION Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Portugal
ERWIN WURM
Opening 10 November
Erwin Wurm was born in 1954. He lives and works in Vienna and in Limberg/Lower Austria. During the 90s Wurm attracted much attention with his "One-Minute Sculptures".
Wurm understands the concept of sculpture as the pre-modern premise that sculpture is concerned with the alteration of mass and volume. In this respect, he describes humans gaining or losing weight as a sculptural act.
Wurm's artistic expression, rather like the comic strip or science fiction images, is clear and simple, readily accessible to a wide public. At the same time, he makes use of cynical criticism. Individually as a projection from outside.
"My work is about the drama of the pettiness of existence, whether one approaches it through philosophy or through a diet. In the end we always draw the short straw".
_ Erwin Wurm
EXHIBITIONS IN INSTITUTIONS MAAT, Lisbon, Portugal
LAWRENCE WEINER
PLACED ON EITER SIDE OF THE LIGHT
Opening 5 October
Cristina Guerra Gallery is proud to announce Lawrence Weiner's permanent urban installation at the new MAAT Museum in Lisbon.
Integrating EDP Foundation's collection, Lawrence Weiner's piece is installed on Lisbon's riverfront pavement. The inauguration will be held the same date of MAAT's opening.
The piece is a sentence, written in both English and Portuguese, the local language.
This permanent installation is made of cast-iron, material that will react with time, suffering transformations in colour and texture, ensuring Lawrence Weiner's presence on Lisbon's urban landscape, throughout history.
Curator: Léa Bismuth
The invited curator Léa Bismuth proposes to the spectator a philosophical adventure founded in the relations that artists keep with the writer Georges Bataille's work and thought. Inside the previous Bank of France building, the eleven artists were invited to invest in this uncommon 1500 sq.m.
In a logic of collective creation and investigation, the curator has contacted a selected elite from the contemporary artistic scene, inviting the artists to question with her the texts from the famous author.
For this first exhibition, eleven artists question de concept of "spending" with their unique productions, a perspective of other contemporary artists, and older works from which some will be a great rediscovery.
The "notion of spending" is present in the philosophical and economic essay La Part Maudite, conceived in 1949, in which Georges Bataille studies an "unconditional loss". The economy that he questions do not depend on any longer from a logic of consumption profit but, from a larger consideration that takes into consideration the energy of the living in all its shapes.
The spectator is invited to dive in the most recent creations and discover a wide range of works by this writer often not well known to the grand public.
The exhibition "Dépenses" was conceived as a Parcours in four parts entitled: energy, excess, gift and ritual. These are the stages of a sensorial trip to which the public is invited.
The question of the gift was central in La Part Maudite. This question is also central to this exhibition, occupying Labanque's noble apartment, with its wooden floors and fireplaces. The pieces in this section are simultaneously an offer to the eye and, a reflexion about vanity.
Julião Sarmento is a faithful Georges Bataille reader to whom he pays homage in the series 'Reading Bataille' in which the canvas 'Lick my eyes' (image) belongs to.
This exhibition examines the relationships between various artworks made in the XX century. The works presented are from a private collection in Santa Fe. Connections can be made through the formal elements and can also be forged through subject matter. Often connections are emotional and the intersections are reflected in the mood of the works.
The selection of works presented span over decades of the past century. Nevertheless, it often seems as if the works were created not decades apart.
From the Modernist Intersections: The Tia Collection we highlight John Baldessari's works. The exhibition also features work by Alice Neel, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, amongst others.
Curator: Liam Gillick
This year is the first edition of a new triennial of contemporary art to be held in Okayama, Japan. Liam Gillick is the invited artistic director. The exhibition will feature 31 important contemporary artists.
We highlight the participation of Robert Barry, Angela Bulloch and Lawrence Weiner. Other included artists are, to mention a few, Peter Fischli David Weiss, Ryan Gander, Philippe Parreno.
"I chose the title "Development" and used that as a starting point for this exhibition. The word here should be understood in various ways. Okayama is an exemplary city. Its historical relationship to development in an urbanistic sense is very particular. Moving between the various sites of the Art Summit the visitor will encounter the layering of change renovation and rebuilding that is at the heart of the contemporary Japanese city.
(...) The word "Development" here also relates to my interest in pre and post production - in cinema, developed capitalism and strategic planning. Ideas in development always retain potential but development strategies are not value-free. (...)"
_ Liam Gillick
This new project "THE SELF - AN EGO MACHINE" tries to find questions to answer like Why do human beings use consciousness?. How do we create empathy with other people? What happens in a trance? Do animals have consciousness?
The exhibition will present 6 artists with different visions that address several aspects of scientific investigation on consciousness, bringing fruitful new developments.
Among the six featured artists, we highlight Matt Mullican's participation.
Curators: Pilvi Kalhama, Henna Paunu, Palvi Talasmaa
EMMA - Espoo Museum of Modern Art celebrates its 10th year with a new exhibition series In Search of the Present. The first exhibition immerses in current issues, as well as considerations on who we are and where we are going.
The exhibition concept was inspired by the 1929 collection of essays by Olavi Paavolainen, an influential Finnish modernist writer, and thinker, in which he discusses the essence of the modern human in the modern, changing world. His thinking offers astounding parallels to questions we are asking ourselves today.
This first edition of the exhibition series explores the nature of human beings, inhabiting a global digital world and its relationship to the environment, with themselves and other human beings.
Presenting works by 22 international artists, the works are produced in severaç media including sound art, installations and commissioned works.
Since the 70s, US artist Matt Mullican has been interested in models for explaining the world. He has developed a complex system of symbols consisting of various pictograms and colours as a mean of tackling the question of the structure of the world, and with his system he aims to portray in symbols every aspect of the human condition in different combinations.
Every colour has a specific symbolic value attached to it. For example, green stands for material, blue for the everyday world, yellow for ideas, white and black for language and red for the subjective.
The model of perception that Mullican calls the theory of the five worlds serves him as a system of order for his method of working as an artist. It illustrates the relationship between the world and its representation. The artist is particularly interested in how we charge symbols and systems of symbols with meaning.
(...) In space-consuming installations that can include all kinds of different media - light boxes, drawings, flags, sculptures, and videos - Mullican spreads out his own personal cosmology, thus attempting to investigate the relationship between reality and perception. Very much aware of the fact that any attempts to assemble human knowledge like an encyclopedia is doomed to failure, he collects and categorizes found objects, images, and symbols and establishes links between them, thus creating ever new correlations and perspectives.
Mullican's strategy for appropriating the world, his interest in interpreting it, also lead to an intense preoccupation with the urban sphere, with the city as the bearer of different systems of symbols and meanings.
_ Nikolaus Bischoff
MICHAEL BIBERSTEIN, JOSÉ LOUREIRO, JULIÃO SARMENTO
Second Nature
Closing 16 October
Second Nature presents over 50 works produced by 26 artists, since the 70s until nowadays.
The exhibition reflects on several expression media, through formulations, transformations, and questionings around the idea of nature and our relationship with nature.
This theme is framed on the global initial cycle of the new MAAT museum exhibitions programme, on the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch defined by the impact of human activity on the environment.
Among the featured artists, we highlight the participation of Michael Biberstein, José Loureiro and Julião Sarmento.
Inverleith House presents the exhibition I Still Believe in Miracles. This exhibition celebrates the originality and significance of the gallery's programme over the past 30 years.
Taking its title from a work by Douglas Gordon that is permanently installed in Inverleith House's upper galleries, I Still Believe in Miracles features the work of 30 leading Scottish and international artists who have made a solo exhibition for Inverleith House.
Among the featured artists, we highlight Lawrence Weiner's work. Other participating artists are, for example, Luke Fowler, Thomas Houseago, Ed Ruscha.
Curator: Robert Storr
The title "The many and the one" is the first exhibition from one of the largest and most important art collections in Brazil: "Andrea e josé Olympio Pereira".
For the exhibition, which will occupy the entire exhibition spaces of Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Robert Storr, the curator selected approximately three hundred pieces authored by more than a hundred Brazilian artists.
According to the curator, this is a set of works which, in addition to its monumentality, features iconic pieces produced by many artists. The exhibition thus provides a refined look on the Brazilian contemporary art scene and its earlier periods, by looking at the production of the 50s until today.
"We are living in a pluralistic era, and also a time of exceptional diversity and hybridity (...) Nowhere is this pluralism richer, more heterogeneous and fruitful than in the America; nowhere in America there is artistic effervescence of all kinds greater than in Brazil."
Among the featured artists, we highlight Rosângela Rennó's participation.
Curator: Jens Hoffmann
Juan Araujo presents a selection of paintings on constructions, sculptures, and books from the famous Portuguese architect, sculptor, and painter Amancio d'Alpoim Miranda Guedes (Lisbon 1925 - Joanesburgh, 2015), know as Pancho Guedes.
Born on the European continent, Guedes lived with his family in the Portuguese ex-colonies of São Tomé and Príncipe. Later he studied in Guiné, South Africa, and Moçambique in the capital, Maputo, wherein post-war years Guedes developed the majority of his work.
Pancho Guedes invested all his projects in the meaning of reason, focusing on the importance of the freedom of thought, colour and figuration, with his paintings full of surrealistic figures, with his humoristic portraits and with a research on wildlife themes.
Curator: Sara Antónia Matos
The exhibition VOID: Júlio Pomar e Julião Sarmento is thought as a specific intervention in this Studio-Museum space. In this space, artists explore the "VOID" concept. Julião Sarmento is the artist invited to draw the exhibition's graphic image.
Julião Sarmento presents a series of pieces on canvas and on paper, with several literary references without any figuration.
"Void" can be understood as an empty space; something that disappears into the void; that its lived as a loss; a vacuum...".
