Wood, J and Harrison, P (2018) You’ve eaten roses, now you’ll drink the moon! [group exhibition]. In: Forum Arte Braga, Av. Dr. Francisco Pires Gonçalves, Apartado 60, 4711-909 Braga, Portugal, 12 September 2018- 12 January 2019.
| Item Type: | Exhibition |
|---|---|
| Creators: | Wood, J and Harrison, P |
| Abstract: | The exhibition You’ve eaten Roses, now you’ll drink the Moon! brings together for the first time a major body of works from the Leal Rios Foundation outside its home in Lisbon. Committed to the legacy of Conceptual art through artworks that materialise the troika of space, time and body, the foundation can be counted among a handful of significant collections in Portugal that foreground a curatorial stance in shaping the collecting and preserving of artworks. By placing works in new contexts their lifespan is extended; accordingly, the exhibition expands upon the principle that art is never entirely finished, but remains in the process of making, an activity that requires engagement by artists, curators and audiences. Works by established and emerging Portuguese artists that form a strong backbone to the collection are contextualized by those of their international peers, pointing to an ever-evolving global art eco-system. The task of displaying a living collection of contemporary art is conditioned as much by what is selected, as by the works that are left behind, and, not least, by the figure of the collector. Such an exhibition takes something from the idea of the palimpsest, which is inscribed by different hands over and again. The show’s title is drawn from a work by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and promotes an expansion of perception beyond vision towards embodied sensation. Contemporary art, we propose, is indebted to intellectual ideas, but equally to atmospheric and personal feeling. The exhibition borrows from the key disciplines that underpin the collection and which are associated with performativity — installation art, performance, moving image and sound — to present a spatial choreography that is completed by the agency of the audience. You’ve eaten Roses, now you’ll drink the Moon! replaces quiet contemplation or rarified intellectual engagement with immersion in an environment of artifacts that jostle one another, see-sawing between dialogue and dispute, an attitude evocative of an encyclopedic account of culture as a repository of endless recombinations that sets out to keep the pieces in play. There is, so to speak, no end-game, since each work’s meaning, though inferred, remains to be determined by the act of perception. Performativity is then the means of acting to co-produce realities. Historian Norman M. Klein refers to absorption in scripted spaces, designed to emphasize the viewer’s journey — the space where the viewer walks into the story. Consequently You’ve eaten Roses, now you’ll drink the Moon! divides the gallery into three main spaces that suggest possible narratives. The entrance hall draws the audience into the exhibition by sound rather than by sight. Sound percolates throughout the space, enticing the visitor’s curiosity, a stratagem used throughout the exhibition to create points of attention and as a leveling device — emulating the gentle murmur of a library that raises the ambient noise — texturing the hard surfaces of the newly built gallery. The first zone is dominated by a large platform, painted in camouflage green displaying a number of sculptural works, which is flanked by video monitors and framed images. It functions as a floating ‘island’, giving a common surface to otherwise seemingly distinct works and owes something to the hypothetical idea of utopia, where propositions and models commingle with worldmaking. The central space makes use of a more generous layout as it brings together artworks that employ progressive reduction and abstraction to foreground the act of perception itself. The final space deepens the shadows from a metaphor to a physical experience and presents a number of low-lit theatrical tableaux that combine questions of scale, illusion and atmosphere. |
| Official URL: | https://www.bragamediaarts.com/en/calendar/youve-e... |
| Date: | 12 September 2018 |
| Event Location: | Av. Dr. Francisco Pires Gonçalves, Apartado 60, 4711-909 Braga, Portugal |
| Number of Pieces: | 3 |
| Medium: | Video |
| Measurements/Duration: | 20 minutes |
| Note: | Exhibition of work by: Helena Almeida, Christian Andersson, Joachim Bandau, Becky Beasley, Michael Biberstein, João Biscainho, Luís Paulo Costa, Dénes Farkas, Ângela Ferreira, John Wood and Paul Harrison, |
| Subjects: | N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR |
| Divisions: | Bath School of Art, Film and Media |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Nov 2018 11:12 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Nov 2023 09:42 |
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