Showing posts with label Serralves Museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Serralves Museum. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

"Carla Filipe: In My Own Language, I Am Independent" @ Serralves Museum

Carla Filipe must be among the most creative artists working in the world if her prodigious work exhibited at the Serralves is any indication.  Some might call this pen and ink chicken scratch, but not me.  Of the three exhibits I saw, this one was the most compelling.



Filipe's sweet spot, which she expresses in multiple media, seems to be the nexus among politics, pop culture and personal experience.  No plastic shopping bags for her.


Her bilingualism is evident with many of her cartoon-like drawings, captioned in both Portuguese and English.  

"I need a job I need love" (2005)
It's hard to tell how seriously to take her geopolitics.

"Atlas" (2005)
I'm guessing some of her work is satirical.  It reminds me of inexpensively produced agitprop that you might have found on a college campus in the 60s, although she wasn't born until 1973, near the end of Portugal's political dictatorship.


Filipe must have been politically precocious to revile Margaret Thatcher, whose nanny state coincided with her early adolescence.  Did she misspell the right-wing prime minister's name wrong deliberately?


Our similarity in musical taste contributed to my appreciation of her relentlessly contemporary work.


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"To Whom It May Concern: A Collection, A Letter" @ Serralves Museum

The works in this gallery were once owned by a bank.  The Serralves Museum, established by the Portuguese government, didn't open until 1999, so I guess that's one way to build a permanent collection although IMHO it says a lot about the unhealthy relationship between art and money.

"Serie Logic Drawings" by William Kentridge (1999)
Even though I'd seen the Alex Katz exhibit at the Guggenheim last fall, I didn't recognize the artist's work here perhaps because it was so much smaller in scale.

"Two Spanish Soldiers" (1981)
Unidentified Work by Jorg Immendorff

Untitled Work by Pedro Casqueiro (2000)

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"Entelechy" @ Serralves Museum

"Hope Hippo" is the first thing you see (and hear) when you walk into the Serralves Museum.  It's part of "Entelechy," a fascinating mid-career retrospective of work by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla,  a pair of 50-something artists who live and work in Puerto Rico.


I suspect the occasional whistle-blowing may be sounding the alarm about climate change, which has gotten exponentially worse since this piece was first performed in 2005.  


Synthetic flower petals--some yellow, some pink--that look and feel as if they've just fallen from a bloom are scattered throughout the multimedia exhibit that occupies two large floors of the museum. 

"Graft" (partial, 2019)
Entelechy is a concept that has been around since Aristotle. Philosophy has never been my bailiwick but the artists' environmental concerns come through loud and clear.  The exhibit has taken its name from this monumental coal sculpture they cast in 2020 from a tree struck by lightning.

What says "fossil fuels" more loudly than "Petrified Petrol Pump," a 2010 work?


The whole experience is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.  It's easy to see why they represented the United States at the 2011 Venice Biennale.


More Portugal:  


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Over the Moon

Strangely, my hotels in both Porto and Lisbon were within close proximity to imposing monuments commemorating Europe's early 19th century Peninsular War.  That's when Portugal, Spain and England joined forces to beat Napoleon back from the Iberian peninsula.  At the top of this column (completed only a year before my birth!) , a lion, representing the Portuguese and British armies, brings down the French imperial eagle but the story of the figures at the base is more tragic:  they represent the 4,000 soldiers and citizens of Porto who died while fleeing Napoleon's army when their combined weight collapsed a bridge over the Douro River.  A dark, disturbing painting at the Bishop's Palace also depicted this national trauma.  


After a good night's sleep, I was on my way to a contemporary art museum located far from the historic center but within walking distance of my hotel, noticing everything.



On the twisting Rue de Serralves, I stumbled upon dozens of tiny ceramic plates, tiles and spoons affixed to a wall



. . . along with a hair cutting establishment called "The Godbarber"


. . . a very old door


. . . Jesus's mailbox


. . . and meta bike parking!  Behind this empty rack, I caught my first glimpse of Casa de Serralves, a pink Art Deco villa, and perhaps the most distinctive feature of the wonderful museum and park. 



In addition to seeing several terrific exhibitions of contemporary art ("Entelechy," "To Whom It May Concern: A Collection, A Letter" and a Carla Filipe retrospective) at the extraordinary museum housed in another building,  I spent a couple of hours exploring the park.  It felt as if I had the place to myself.


There's also a stand-alone museum (the villa's former garage) with an interactive exhibit devoted to the archives of Manoel de Oliveira, a Porto-born Portuguese filmmaker whose centenarian-plus life extended from the silent movie era to the awful age of IP.  Although I'd never heard of him before stepping inside, I won't soon forget the crash course I got quite by chance through an astonishing collection of video clips, marketing materials, equipment, scripts and awards.






Even the men's room graphics are cool at Serralves.


There's also a pasture


. . . a wildflower meadow


. . . and a trippy exhibit in another stand-alone space devoted to the art of mushrooms!

Mushrooms by Sylvie Fleury (2005-2011)
"Thames Mud Before Dawn" by Hamish Pearch (2021)
Not to mention the treetops walking tour, and the sculpture and rose gardens but you'll have to watch the longest video I've ever shot to see those.  


The Serralves contains multitudes--do not, DO NOT miss it if you ever find yourself in Porto. It's more impressive than the Guggenheim Bilbao by a mile.  Oops, I mean 50 acres.


More Portugal:  



 

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