Welcome to Cristina Guerra Newsletter January 2017.
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Portugal
ANDRÉ CEPEDA
Rasgo
Opening 12 January | 4 March
We have the pleasure to announce our following exhibition RASGO by André Cepeda, opening Thursday 12 January, 10 pm.
"(...) 'Depois' and RASGO are different projects, with a common element: they do not represent, strictly speaking, the city, but the perspective of André Cepeda; his subjective vision of the city. Cepeda believes that photography is invariably about showing "how the artist sees, how he frames reality". In this case, we are offered a low point of view and observe the city much like a street dog or a coyote would see it. In this sense, one can see a certain performative intention in this photographic experience; an attempt to dialectically influence the reality that is being represented. With no human figures, it is the presence of the photographer and his peculiar interaction with the space that "humanises" the latter. Or should we say, that "animalises" it? The title RASGO, suggests a violent and aggressive action (tear, rip), confirming this impression.
Finally, the exhibition constitutes another step in the career of André Cepeda, as he investigates the possibilities of "installed" photography. He started testing with it in June, in his show at Fridman Gallery in New York, and now he repeats the experiment for this new project at Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art. Like a small and brilliant sky-scraper, the enigmatic paper cylinder that redefines the space of the first room is, also here, a fundamental piece in the show as it tells us about the relationship between the image and its materiality and corporeality. This is, essentially, the subject that unifies all the images and André Cepeda's experience in New York: a search for the "real", for a human scale, in a context of artifice, simulation and spectacle, as it was described by Jean Baudrillard in his book America (1986)."
Pedro de Llano, 2017
"For this exhibition, Mullican layers his multiple methods of categorisation and ordering. Mathematically dividing the gallery spaces, he has laden them with pin-boards, posters, drawings, flags, objects, photography and videos, all depicting his various maps, charts, diagrams and symbols".
The Camden Arts Centre programme curator, Gina Buenfeld, is organising the last guided tour to Matt Mullican's exhibition 'The Sequence of Things', Sunday January 2017. This will be the last opportunity to see the exhibition.
Considered the largest exhibition of Portuguese Contemporary Art in Brazil, this exhibition integrates a trilogy about the most recent African artistic production, from Portugal and Brazil.
Showing 270 works, this exhibition reveals some of the most important Portuguese artists, bringing them closer to the Brazilian cultural universe.
Sponsored by EDP Brazil, with a support of the EDP institute, that coordinates EDP institute's environmental actions, Itaú Bank and Rainer Blicke, Leonardo Kossoy and Orandi Momesso.
"'In Search of the Present' reflects on current issues that are shaping art and society, encouraging viewers to participate in a public debate. The exhibition is organised in three themes: 'The New Me', 'Digital Mankind' and 'Nature Kingdom'. The exhibition explores the nature of human beings that inhabit a global digital world and their relationship to the environment, with themselves and other human beings".
'The exhibition title WHEREWITHAL in white uppercase is outlined in black. It is work about language and, according to Weiner, a mental image for the state of society, people and the world today. (...)
On the walls of Kunsthaus Bregenz Weiner's texts become a commentary on the architecture, the space, and sensory experience. His works are only apparently site-specific. They relate to themselves, pursue elliptical odysseys through meaning and create deft plays on society, politics, and the place of art.
Lawrence Weiner is particularly important to Kunsthaus Bregenz because of his spatial thinking'.
The exhibition 'The Colour of Brazil' draws the path of Brazilian art from the colonial period to this century. In display are more than 300 works, from Argentina, Mexico and other 12 institutions from severals places in Brazil.
The exhibition is structured in three galleries. The first one entitled 'The transformation of light and of the ecological environment of colour', is dedicated to the synthetic vision of landscape.
The second gallery, 'Modernity and autonomy in art', it's formed by several groups of artists, representing different movements, like the 'Concretistas' from São Paulo.
In the third gallery, 'Opinião, Tropicália, Generation 80 and the Colour of the XXI century', the focus becomes the colour in Rio de Janeiro, through movements that happened in this city.
Reaching the XXI century, the idea of 'national', that has the country flag as its most important icon, is questioned. This exhibition reignites the implications and political projects on colour in contemporary art, questioning whether it exists an Afro-Brazilian colour in art.
Among the featured artists, we highlight Rosângela Rennó's work 'Per fumum', 2010-2011 (top-right reference image).
Conversations: recent Portuguese art in the Serralves Collection
Closing 22 January
The Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art dedicates this exhibition to recently acquired or soon to be incorporated works of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, film and video, produced in the XXI century.
The exhibition explores narratives of the real, the legacies of modernism, expanded notions of painting, and visionary worlds of imagined landscapes and speculative surrealism.
The exhibition includes works by 17 Portuguese artists. We highlight André Cepeda's, José Loureiro's (reference image), Diogo Pimentão's and Julião Sarmento's work.
The exhibition Void: Júlio Pomar and Julião Sarmento gives sequence to the exhibitions programme from Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar's annual research, creating a dialogue between Júlio Pomar's work and other artists, aiming to establish new relationships between this painter work and his contemporaneity.
Void* is thought by both artists, where throughout paintings and drawings, they explore this concept of "Void". Julião Sarmento was the artist invited to draw this exhibition.
"Void" can be understood as an empty space; something that disappears in the void; that is lived as a loss or a privation; a missing or an opening; a wave or a vacuum...
We highlight Julião Sarmento's work. Sarmento shows several works on canvas and paper, with different literary references, without any figuration.
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil
ERWIN WURM
The Body and the House
Opening 25 January
Curator: Marcello Dantas
Through is art, the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm, produces a displacement of trivial elements from the everyday life to the field of art, reconfiguring familiar objects like houses, cars, clothes and food to an unexpected context, funny and simultaneously critic in relation to contemporary society.
In this exhibition 'The Body and the House' Wurm will show a series of works which discuss the human body not only from a physical perspective but also from his psychological and spiritual layers.
For the artists, the house is part of our body: the house is a sort of skin that protects us, like a car or clothes. In his work these elements become inanimate, with an organic life - an obese residency, a thin toilet, a sausage full of personality, a car over its weight. These transformed objects speak about themselves, but they also speak about each one of us.
The body and human behaviour in general, are in discussion in Erwin Wurm's 'One Minute Sculptures', where the audience is invited to follow instructions to become part of the artist's sculpture during 60 seconds, in a sort of spontaneous performance.
On the opening day, 25 January, Wurm will give a talk at the Cultural Centre about his creative process.
During artgenève 2017, the platform artgenève/musique will present at Villa Sarasin (next door to artgenève halls) a series of performances and concerts.
For this year's edition, among other artists, musicians and performers, we highlight the participation of Angela Bulloch.
This year will be hectic in terms of spatial movements in CIAJG permanent collection, with a constant changing between younger and more experienced artists and with very diverse proposals.
For 2017 first exhibitions cycle, José de Guimarães International Art Centre will present works related with the body seen through different perspectives - body and death, body and war, body and history, and the body's representation.
This cycle will present several artists work developed with the use of archive material, as a resource to look into the past, to understand it more and to bring it to the present, eventually preparing the construction of a future.
This exhibition creates a dialogue between ethnic art, from several regions of the globe (Africa, Colombia, China), with contemporary art.
From the selection of twelve contemporary artists, we highlight Rui Toscano's participation.
Destinerância: O lugar do morto é o lugar da fotografia
Opening 28 January
Few photographers have developed, like Edgar Martins, such a powerful reflection about the contemporary regimes of visualisation, the use of photography in the institutional context, the relation with photography with our life and our death.
The exhibition that Martins presents at CIAJG results from a project that was prepared throughout 3 years of research and that had two first and considerably smaller presentations in Lisbon, MAAT and in Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art.
Edgar Martins visual reflection resulted in a sound exhibition, sometimes shocking, about the power that photographic image to capture the memory of a body that passed the border between life and death.
What occurs in the exchange between words and images, the literary and the visual? In this group exhibition, Norwegian and international artists and writers from different generations reflect on this issue.
This is the first major collaboration between the two neighbouring institutions 'Artists's House' and the 'House of Literature'.
Pictures and words are completely intertwined in our beliefs and stories about the world. They are our basic tools to grasp the world, acting simultaneously at different levels. Silent images speak, even argue, whereas writing can conjure a world of inner images.
The exhibition examines how text and images charge and influence one another, but also how they undermine each other.
The exhibition includes works by 14 artists. Among the featured artists like Marcel Broodthaers, Matias Faldbakken and William Kentridge, we highlight John Baldessari's work.
Photography Biennale, Vila Franca de Xira, Portugal
João Paulo Feliciano, João Onofre, Rui Toscano
BFVFX
Closing 29 January
Curator: David Santos
The general theme of this year's biennale is "Archive and Observation". The biennale presents 30 interventions in different parts of the city _ Vila Franca de Xira, opening an artistic relation with the daily routine, engaging public spaces like the Public Library and the local Market.
Three curators invited thirty remarkable artists in the national panorama of photography,
In less than three months, they present their experiences framed by the contemporary practice of photography and, in a few cases, video.Through the invitation of the main curator _ David Santos, 30 artists were selected to this biennale.
We highlight the participation of João Paulo Feliciano at the Market, João Onofre and Rui Toscano at the Municipal Museum.
The exhibition at Oi Futuro Flamengo occupies all the exhibition spaces, including the reception. Furniture pieces are used to mount Rennó's work "Per fumum" and the window "As Águas Viajantes". Also part of the exhibition are the pieces "Lanterna Mágica", "Turista Transcendental", "Realismo Fantàstiém daco" and "Círculo Mágico".
Involved in a timeless atmosphere, the visitor will sharpen its senses, through the artworks in the exhibition. The spectator will also deepen the knowledge of Rosângela Rennó's work through her own writings, offering a sound background of her philosophical and technical references.
