EXHIBITIONS
Sala de Estar | Living Room
2015 -
Porto, Portugal |
Sala de Estar (Living Room) is an alternative exhibition space that promotes and reflect over contemporary art. With an informal approach, the exhibition space is literally a living room in a residential apartment, providing an environment for artistic experimentation. Individual and group shows are presented with only one curatorial premise: what we call the "instruction method". That means that the artist dictates what should be done (the instructions), providing or suggesting the material and steps to make the works, and they are done by the curator-producer in local context. This concept seeks to discuss ideas of authorship and originality and, at the same time, overpass financial issues regarding the transportation of international artworks.
We also publish interviews with the participating artists - we believe interviews are a better alternative than overly intricated curatorial texts. The program is open to all artists interested in discussing its proposal. All the projects are a result of intense exchange between the artist and the curator. Website | Facebook page |
Keywords: curatorship, independent art space, experimental exhibitions
Exhibitions held at Sala de Estar | Living Room
Manifesto
Manifesto was the first exhibition presented at Sala de Estar | Living Room. The brazilian artist Fábio Tremonte accepted the challenge of elaborating a solo show following one single rule: all the needed to send was instructions, and the works would be ellaborated by the curator/producer from a distance.
Manifesto is composed by a series of 97 sentences writen with a stencil type and printed in white on black A4 sheets. The type, not choosen randomly, refers to the stenciled alphabets used in army-themed displays. The phrases are excerpts from the Communist Manifesto (Engels & Marx), first published in 1848. By presenting these carefully selected sentences out of they original context, Tremonte proves the contemporaneity of one of the most important political tractates of modern times. The phrases reflect perfectly the current social and political scenario. About the exhibition [Portuguese only] |
Jogo de Evocação | Evocation Game
Léo Tavares is a visual artist and writer. He is, in fact, an artist-writer or a writer-artist: he creates images with words e writes plastically - in his work, text and image are inseparable. When creating visual works, they are almost exclusively based on words; when he writes (in 2014 he launched the book Os Doentes em Torno da Caixa de Mesmer), his descriptions create vivid mental images full of details and subtleties. Word and image play an uninterrupted feedback game.
In Evocation Game, Léo Tavares give words to spectators so each one can create its own works - images that are only mentally accessible. In that way, each imagined work is private, unique, untransferable - and, in a sense, inaccessible. Design: Luciana Bastos. About the exhibition [Portuguese only] |
Brasil: ficções | Brasil: ficciones
2014 - Armazém do Chá - Porto, Portugal
2015 - Espacio Tangente - Burgos, Spain |
Brasil: ficções (Brazil: fictions) is a project that aims to promote brazilian contemporary art to international audiences, being presented in Portugal and Spain so far. The presented artists were either born or live in different regions in Brazil. The project's title reveals its main intention: to reveal the multiples ways of understanding what is - or what it can be - a country like Brazil and its contemporary art production. By presenting works in different formats and with diverse conceptual motifs, Brazil: fictions try to dismatle stereotypes related to the country and to a so-called "brazilian art". The group show has a strong video-art component, featuring over 20 works divided into conceptual groups. Other works were created using the "instruction-method": artists were invited to send instructions to the assembly of their works, without providing phisical materials. This practice intent to discuss the idea of reproducibility of contemporary art, reflect over the concepts of originality and authorship. Thus, the project demonstrate how to overcome distance by performing artistic propositions that wish to do so. Project page | Article published in El Correo de Burgos |
Keywords: contemporary art, brazilian art, brazil, instruction-method
Ofélia Hoje | Ophelia Now
2015
Angelina Nogueira solo show At CAAA (Centre for Arts and Architecture) - Guimarães, Portugal |
There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. There with fantastic garlands did she come Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do “dead men’s fingers” call them. There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke, When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like a while they bore her up, Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indued Unto that element. But long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death. (Hamlet. Act IV, Scene VII.) Ophelia Now is a site-specific work done by Angelina Nogueira presented at Gallery #4, at CAAA. The piece is composed by a video, a sculpture and a series of prints. As the title suggests, the work is a contemporary rereading of the famous shakesperian character. Through the juxtaposition of mixed elements (plastic, grass, soil, a bathtub, among others), Angelina's work talk about the possibilities of contemporary Ophelia's and the cyclicity of life. |
Keywords: contemporary art, angelina nogueira, CAAA