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).