The title is already somehow the extensive Career explanation of what is “one of the most influential living Portuguese artists”, as noted you Suzanne Cotter, the Serralves Museum director: My work is my body, my body is my work is the exposure that the Porto Museum (MACS) now dedicated to Helena Almeida (n. Lisbon, 1934), which opens to the public this Saturday, can be visited until January 10.
The exhibition has as curators Marta Moreira de Almeida and João Ribas, deputy director of MACS, this Friday at the presentation of the show to the media, called the attention to the fact that, unlike other undertaken to date, including the earlier made in Serralves decade and a half, it reconstruct the route Helena Almeida from its initial creation, in 1966, up to more recent years (2012) .
“We step back ten years,” the alignment of the works of the artist, who usually starts with the series inhabited painting , 1975, stressed João Ribas, adding that this allowed to put in sets of jobs dialogue that were not together for over 40 years.
The lack of distinction between work and body is a recognized brand in Helena Almeida path. “I started with a familiar language (…) and little by little all these elements began to leave the frame. Then the screen began to self-destruct, A Necessary sity to end the painting (…) I tell paint destruction because the screen turned out to be anthropomorphic. Eventually identify with me, “said the artist in 2000, now cited in a catalog text with the MACS accompanies this exhibition, which should come out within a week.
This route and this evolution in the production of Helena Almeida are well documented in the exhibition Serralves, even if it is not a retrospective, nor the curators wanted to follow a strict chronological way.
After a welcome visitors in hall with 18 photographs of the series Inside me (1995-98), entry into the exhibition itself is done with a recreation of the artist’s inaugural show in Gallery Buchholz (1967), Lisbon: two enlarged photographs of the walls of the exhibition, and a third wall with two works that were in the original show. are pictures of abstract genius that reflect the atmosphere of European artistic creation the years of postmodernism, particularly in France and Germany, stress the trustees.
But João Ribas calls attention to a series of six small photographs, recovered between Helena Almeida files, in which the artist herself begins to arise in one of the images, but then out of the frame and the screen itself, at first of decentration in relation to painting. Hence the curator and deputy director of MACS maintains that “Helena Almeida is not a painter, but a body in permanent performance” and that the design – which is also a constant in his work – is “a form of it express his thinking. “
Still in the first of five rooms filled with My work is my body, my body is my work , see inhabited Design , a series of sculptural designs with the use of horsehair wire on cardboard background. Seeming to jump from his seat, these drawings earn three-dimensionality, “become almost sculptures,” Marta Almeida note, recalling the importance that certainly had for the young artist living in his father’s workshop, the sculptor Leopoldo de Almeida (author of monuments iconic all over the country, like the sculptural composition of the Discoveries in Lisbon, equestrian statue of Nuno Alvares Pereira, in the battle, or the statue of Ramalho Ortigão in Porto).
In second room of the exhibition – subject to a more dimly lit due to the impositions of the Tate for displaying a series of drawings belonging to the London museum collection – the face of Helena Almeida, in approximate plan and in close-up, returns to protagonist of the series Listen to me , Sit me , Watch me (1979). Your covered and gagged face can be seen as a warning, a cry in which João Ribas admits able to read “a statement of feminism” but also warns of a political and sociological reality – 1979, says the curator, was the year of the Islamic revolution in Iran. – who returns to be of concern in current times
In the same space, Helena Almeida shooting in a dispute with the color blue, with successively larger brushstrokes to overlap the your whole body ( inhabited painting ). “Use the blue because it is a color space. It must be blue (…). It is even space, is swallowing the paint, “explains the artist in an interview to Serralves exhibition’s curators.
The next room is completely filled with The embrace (2007) series of eight photographs in which the artist’s husband, Artur Rosa, “dispute” with him the space of a atelier bank. “The Arthur had five seconds to get near me. It was the machine of time, “said Helena Almeida to the Trustees on this sequence, as circumstances turned in a rare moment of spontaneity, though to be designed in advance.
In the space next to the body of the artist stages to black, a ritualization of his paintings (of his body) with space – and a video recorded this relationship. “The work of Helena Almeida is also the record of the evolution and transformation of the aging of your own body,” João Ribas note, noting that it was a daring you see very little in contemporary painting.
The route of My work is my body, my body is my work closes the hall, with a showcase with drawings for the series Inside me , and new sequence of photographs in which the body of the artist begins to shed a black spot that in the end, becomes the projection of his own shadow. Black on black, epilogue of a journey of nearly half a century that began in the mid-60s with a young body portrayed in polaroid color? …
Helena Almeida , 81, traveled to Paris to attend the official opening of his exhibition, scheduled for the evening of Friday, but declined to follow the guided tour for journalists.
Until January, the exhibition will be accompanied by a parallel program that includes new guided tours and also the projection of the documentary Helena Almeida: inhabited painting (2006), Joan Ascension (November 14), and-demonstration conference I was here , by John Fiadeiro (November 28).
In the spring of next year, will be presented at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris, and in the Autumn will arrive at the Contemporary Art Centre . Brussels
It will be the opportunity – after the biennial of São Paulo (1979), Venice (1982 and 2005) and Sydney, as well as other exhibitions in other cities, such as Santiago de Compostela (2000), New York (2004), Cambridge and Madrid (2009) – to re-display out there, and the new generations, “a radical and profound work, which uses the body of a so committed as movingly,” notes Suzanne Cotter
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