Gabinete do Desenho of Casa Guerra Junqueiro hosts the exhibition "Cadernos A & B: Prelúdio e Fuga", by artist Jorge Feijão. With free entry, until it achieves the venue’s maximum capacity, and following the scrupulous compliance with preventive measures, the exhibition can be visited until 24 January 2021. It is a unique opportunity to discover an immense series of drawings, of small format, between the sketch and the finished drawing, the light and the dark, the speed and the reflection of the hand and thought. As if in this exhibition at Museu da Cidade, the drawing itself was revealed through a certain musical cadence. The set of works that is on display constitutes - let us make the analogy - as a palimpsest of motifs that are similar to an imagery atlas. Widely used in the Middle Ages, palimpsest was a manuscript in parchment or papyrus, which was regularly scraped or erased to allow the reuse of the material and the subsequent overlapping of a new writing, even though traces of the previous handwritten text could be seen.
Spontaneous and popular fair where you can buy birds, food and cages. Even if you do not want to buy anything, you can enjoy the singing birds, their colour and the liveliness of the fair. When passing through the fair, one must take a look at the breath-taking view of the Douro River and its bridges.
From 6 December 2019 to 27 December 2020, the Natural History and Science Museum of the University of Porto (MHNC-UP) hosts, in its core pole (Historical Building of the Rectory of the University of Porto, near Cordoaria Garden), the exhibition Cultures and Geographies. Marking its centennial commemorations, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto (FLUP) co-organizes with the MHNC-UP, and in collaboration with the Soares dos Reis National Museum, an exhibition that presents the collections that were part of the its museology and artistic holdings during the first phase of its existence (1919-1931). Originally used as teaching resources in three museum-rooms of the first FLUP, these collections, which, in 1941, moved to the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto, are now in the care of MHNC-UP. Through a set of 250 extraordinary pieces of archaeology and ethnography, visitors will be invited to travel over time and explore ways of life, experiences and rituals of human communities on each of the five continents.
The exhibition "Revolução de 24 de Agosto de 1820: Prelúdio do Liberalismo em Portugal" will open at Museu Militar do Porto, curated by Fernando Gonçalves. Open to the public for ten months (until 1 August 2021), the exhibition depicts the bravery of a group of notable citizens of Porto, who took the first step towards the end of the British influence and the resulting liberal monarchy 200 years ago. The North demanded the return of the King, a Constitution, justice, and prosperity. The seeds of progress and modernity were sown in Portugal and there are documents and historical items that prove it.
More than 200 forged paintings, seized in the last 15 years by Diretoria do Norte da Polícia Judiciária (detective force), are on display at Alfândega do Porto. "A Arte do Falso" gathers not only counterfeit works of names like Picasso, Júlio Pomar, Cesariny, Malangatana, Amadeo Souza Cardoso, but also unusual objects that reveal the genius of criminals. Between counterfeit banknotes, umbrellas that turn into weapons, paintings exhibited at art gallery auctions that had been screened by specialists, the exhibition holds many surprises, including a machine that would have the gift of healing people all over the world by simply turning on some lights. The forged works on display to the public were located by the detectives of the police force, mainly in the urban areas of Lisbon and Porto, in art galleries, auctions, fairs, exhibitions and antique shops. In the exhibition there is also a space dedicated to the little ones, where they can take fingerprints and compare them on different surfaces.
R. H. Quaytman employs mechanical reproduction techniques and conceptual art traditions to create closed series of works divided into chapters. Subsequent parts are numbered to mark the passage of time and gradually completing life and artistic project. The artist treats all exhibitions and paintings presented as one creative undertaking. R. H. Quaytman approaches painting as if it were poetry: when reading a poem, one notices specific words, we realise that each word has a resonance. Quaytman's paintings, organised into chapters structured like a book, have grammar, syntax and vocabulary. While the work is delimited by a rigid structure on a material level - they appear only in bevelled plywood panels in eight predetermined sizes derived from the golden ratio - the open-ended content creates permutations that result in an endless archive. Quaytman's practice engages three distinct stylistic modes: silkscreen based on photographs, optical patterns such as moiré and scintillating grids, and small hand-painted oil works. Quaytman's work, presented for the first time in Portugal, points to the new possibilities of today's painting. What is a painting, an icon? What are the means of painting in a culture saturated by visual stimulation, from photography to the digital forest of signs? Is painting still a relevant medium to share our story? The exhibition is co-organised by Muzeum Sztuki in Lódz, Poland, and by Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto. Curated by Jaroslaw Suchan
This is the first exhibition in Portugal by Korakrit Arunanondchai (Thailand, 1986), an artist who works in the fields of video, performance, sculpture and installation and who interacts between two cultures: born and raised in Asia he moved to the US in 2009 to study art and currently lives between New York and Bangkok. Arunanondchai's work explores and brings together themes such as Eastern religion and mythology, environment, ecology, music, geopolitics and technological development, contrasting Asian spirituality with Western pragmatism. Arunanondchai reflects on contemporary life and the human condition in the era of technology, speculating on the consequences of the Anthropocene, a recently definition that sees the effect of human activity as the main environmental force on the planet, capable of altering its geological composition. In his practice, the artist uses autobiographical events and experiences. Friends and family participate and are somehow involved in several of his works. No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5 (2019) is an installation made in partnership with the artist Alex Gvojic (U.S., 1984), a friend with whom he has been working for several years. Boychild, an artist linked to performance and dance who has regularly collaborated with Korakrit Arunanondchai, is also featured in this piece. No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5 envelops visitors in a mysterious and nocturnal environment in which a triple video projection is combined with laser rays emitted by a sculpture reminiscent of a lying human figure. The earth that covers the floor and the presence of natural materials (seashells, twigs) suggest a pre or post, historical environment. No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5 comprises a wide range of images and sounds, o generate an excessive, enveloping and disturbing atmosphere. The videos mix original footage - such as that captured by a drone of the Ramasum Camp radio station, a symbol of Thailand's recent history as an ally of the USA during the Vietnam War and now transformed into a tourist destination - and other pre-existing ones, such as television broadcast of of the rescue of 12 boys and their football coach who were trapped in a cave in Thailand in 2018. This work was initially commissioned by the Center d’Art Contemporain Genève for the 2018 Biennale of Moving Image and presented at the Venice Biennale in 2019.
Specifically conceived for the Contemporary Gallery, Hugo Canoilas' first exhibition (Lisbon, 1977) at the Serralves Museum is both a confirmation and expansion some core concerns in his practice: a speculative approach to the relationship between art and reality (social and political events), a questioning of the characteristics and boundaries of painting, and the emphasis given to collaborative work. With a background in painting, Canoilas has been examining the place of this artistic medium, how it is perceived both by museum visitors and passers-by (the artist is known for public space interventions which are never advertised as works of art). In the case of this exhibition at Serralves, Canoilas dispensed with the place where paintings are most expected to be found - the gallery walls - and decides to intervene on the floor, skirting board and ceiling of the Contemporary Gallery - spaces neglected by most painting exhibitions. On the floor there are three coloured glass pieces that represent jellyfish. Made in Marinha Grande, these jellyfish - possible symbols of climate warming, but also of such ideas as formlessness and metamorphosis on which several works by Hugo Canoilas are based – are meant to be stepped on by visitors. The main role given to the floor is confirmed by the skirting board-painting (a light box, featuring a painting on linen stretched like a canvas, delimiting the space of the exhibition), in which the artist draws attention to an architectural element that is as common as it is unnoticed. On the gallery ceiling, Hugo Canoilas will create a gestural painting that, like his most recent abstract paintings, is based on images of the seabed’s flora and fauna. It should be noted that the painting also functions as a lightbox that creates an aura in the room, affecting the perception of the jellyfish. Jellyfish are fascinating animals that, throughout their unusual life cycles undergo various metamorphoses and reproduce cells in unusual ways. His observation, which witnesses dramatic variations in configuration, defies all notions of stability and all ideas on the relationship between the parts and the whole. Just like this exhibition by Hugo Canoilas, comprised of three distinct elements - floor, skirting board and ceiling - that influence one another (in cooperation, symbiosis, competition, predation and parasitism) and which is an embodiment of an artistic practice that does not crystallize in a form, but which constantly question themselves about its own limits, functions and assumptions.
The more than one hundred photographs on display in the Manoel de Oliveira Fotógrafo exhibition are one of the big surprises that the director’s personal archive, entirely deposited in Serralves, had been holding. Produced between the late 1930s and the mid-1950s, these images, stored for several decades and mostly never-before-seen, reveal an unknown facet of Oliveira and open new perspectives on how his filmmaking developed. Manoel de Oliveira's passage through the static image is a decisive stage in his career as a filmmaker. In dialogue with both pictorialism, constructivism and Bauhaus' experiments, his photographs are halfway between exploring the classical values of composition and the modernist spirit running through the entire first phase of his film work. Used mostly artistically, photography is for the director an instrument of formal research and experimentation, another way of questioning, often in direct relationship with films, to building his own visual language. These images that are now on view, certainly add a new chapter to the history of Portuguese photography of the 1940s. But they are also a precious instrument to better understand the way Manoel de Oliveira took on, during a period of ten years, the direction of photography of his own films, as well as to contextualize, from a broader perspective, the strict composition that, in general, featured in all his films. Looking at these images, it will not be of much interest to know where the photographer begins and where the filmmaker ends, nor to define, with precision, the extent to which the first one may have sometimes taken the place of the second one. What is important, is to question how this coexistence between two ways of seeing and thinking is embodied in Manoel de Oliveira's work. Curated by António Preto, Director of Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira. All the photographs on display belong to the Manoel de Oliveira Collection, Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira - Fundação de Serralves, Porto.
The Mercado da Ribeira consists of 10 stores, and was created after the renovation of the old market. Food products in its traditional form, tourist products and restaurants. Location: Cais da Ribeira (near the north pillar of Luiz I Bridge).
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is one of the great masterpieces of Russian music and, being a favorite piece of the general public, is one of the most celebrated orchestration that Ravel has done of pieces by other authors. Based on the paintings and drawings by the painter Viktor Hartmann, we find mythological creatures like the gnome who runs with deformed legs or the witch Baba-Yaga. A distinctive element of this work is the Promenade, which in its various versions represents the path that a visitor takes between the different pictures and rooms of an imaginary museum. In this commented concert, Rui Pereira tells us the fantastic stories behind the images and the music.
Alfredo Cunha who we are talking about is the man with his camera and his gaze. Any good photojournalist senses, before he knows it clearly, that an image, which must contain all content and seduction, is, has always been a decisive moment. Before being defined by Cartier-Bresson, it already existed in the mind of those who photograph the event, the face and the movement. In Alfredo Cunha's long 50-year career, much has changed: the country he photographs; the equipment he uses - far from the very first Petri FT, the Leica M3, which he started using in 1973, and all the Leicas that followed and which he has always remained faithful to; photography - from analog, mostly black and white, to digital, which he has been using since 2003. The photojournalistic image responds to the requirement of agreement with the text, it is also linked to where, when, how and why. However, when the photographer has already defined his style, and this is the case of Alfredo Cunha, the seduction of the image overlaps the seduction of the news. In all of them it becomes difficult to associate the image with a style because Alfredo Cunha goes beyond the current trend and theme. And it is in this regard that we can say, with Barthes, that his photographs are the result without a code, they depend on the transmission of his for our affection. Teresa Siza (adapted text)
Over four days, Teatro Carlos Alberto shows the work of four creators from A Turma, a collective company that was born in Porto in 2008. It is a display or showcase condensed in time and space, with continuous sessions at different hours, where they evolve, inside a scenic environment conceived by the scenographer Ana Gormicho, three performances created by Tiago Correia, Manuel Tur and António Afonso Parra. Winner of the Grand Prize of Teatro Português SPA 2018, Alma (Soul) is a play about youth where playwright Tiago Correia creates, with a language as poetic as colloquial, a universe suffused with loneliness and the possibility of trust in friendship and love.
Over four days, Teatro Carlos Alberto shows the work of four creators from A Turma, a collective company that was born in Porto in 2008. It is a display or showcase condensed in time and space, with continuous sessions at different hours, where they evolve, inside a scenic environment conceived by the scenographer Ana Gormicho, three performances created by Tiago Correia, Manuel Tur and António Afonso Parra. In Airbnb e Nuvens: uma rádio novela (Airbnb & Nuvens: a radio soap opera), director Manuel Tur brings to the stage the artifices, resources and methods of radio communication. A “radio soap opera” about a country that is bankrupt and rented-out with the delusion of grandeur (yes, Portugal), written by the sarcastic pen of Luísa Costa Gomes.
Over four days, Teatro Carlos Alberto shows the work of four creators from A Turma, a collective company that was born in Porto in 2008. It is a display or showcase condensed in time and space, with continuous sessions at different hours, where they evolve, inside a scenic environment conceived by the scenographer Ana Gormicho, three performances created by Tiago Correia, Manuel Tur and António Afonso Parra. António Afonso Parra, together with Luís Araújo, appropriated Wake Up And Smell The Coffee, a monologue by Eric Bogosian. A rewriting process, which adapted the text to a new geographical context, has led to the creation of Wake Up, a radical abbreviation of the original title. As if they were telling us, or shouting, that the predatory American way of life has long been a universal heritage ..