The weight of a gesture
The gaze of Julião Sarmento at the CAM, MACBA, "la Caixa" collections.
The exhibition The weight of a gesture, the look of Julião Sarmento at the CAM, MACBA, “La Caixa” collections will be available to visit until 1 May.
In this exhibition, paintings, sculptures, videos and installations get together to seduce the eye and cause a story dedicated to the viewer where works act, suggest, dialogue and also excite. The artist of this project is the portuguese Julião Sarmento and it was proposed to perform an exhibition, exercising his gaze of artist, with works from collections of Fundació “la Caixa”, the MACBA and CAM of Fundação Gulbenkian of Lisbon. Sarmento accepted the challenge and turn the idea into the possibility of creating a work that combine images and ideas to compose a fiction from ecos, suggestions and impressions. This artist works from the collective memory and speculates about possible realities using references to architecture, literature, cinema and art. His work is not finished because it leaves the conclusions in viewer’s hands. He dabbles in the enigma to stimulate the imagination and cause interpretations. His collections are part of the project that share the awareness of being contemporary, but its composition and identity is different. In adittion, The Gulbenkian stands out by the representation of Portuguese art in the first decades of the 20th century while MACBA and “la Caixa” works has an international vision.
The Barcelona museum show special attention to productions derived from the conceptual art of the 1960′s and “la Caixa” welcomes the influence of minimalist art and povera to extend a narrative with input from the art of the last 30 years. In the exhibition, Sarmento articulates a selection of works from different periods around an enigmatic painting by Edgar Degas. The art of the first decade of the 20th century is the most current assembly that prevents the chronological order for a tactile relationship between works.
His intention is to set up the silhouette of a body that leaves his mark, without revealing in space. Pore depressions, skin wrinkles, holes that open up on the surface, as well as his hunch and movement, try a walk where artist leaves open to do a lot of interpretations and connections. That body is expressed with the mystique of monochrome paintings, the dynamism of the geometry, although sometimes it’s silenced by the force of a dam. The exhibition power the enigma, the unknown and invites the viewer to construct his own narrative.