Spread over two floors of the Torreão Nascente of the Cordoaria Nacional, this exhibition presents a comprehensive view of the PLMJ Foundation’s collection, spanning more than four decades.
The selection of works and artists includes different generations from Portuguese-speaking countries, represented in the different areas of the collection, such as painting, drawing, artist’s books, sculpture, installation, as well as photography and video, the latter two areas that form the core of the collection. The exhibition has not been conceived and organised in a chronological or geographical order. Instead, it pays particular attention to themes such as the representation of the body, architecture and the written word, an expression of a conceptual gesture that is also markedly pictorial.
The exhibition is developed along two main lines: a revisiting of the historical areas of the collection, which include key works of artistic creation from the end of the 20th century to the present day, and a special focus on the most recent artistic production, covering the last five years.
Based on the idea of transition – temporal and material – the architecture of the spaces in the Torreão Nascente of the Cordoaria Nacional comprises six rooms spread over two floors. It thus constructs a sequence of moments in the exhibition, like six exhibitions within the exhibition, with the intersection of different artistic practices. Within this system of relationships, one of the most representative areas of the collection has received special attention in the form of two projections of works in video format by different authors, one on each floor of the Torreão. This allows for a further unfolding of the space within the exhibition. In these works, the body and the architectural construction, sometimes fictional, and the self-referential character, sometimes compulsive and present in a cinematographic but disturbing imaginary, stimulate another temporality that this artistic medium demands from the viewer.
The necessary passageways, transition zones that reveal themselves as in-between or interstitial spaces, allow for the development of transitions and mediations, not always literal, between the works on display. There is a strong presence of photography and sculptural works in close relationship with drawing and engraving, as an organic body between the poetic, formal and political imaginaries that characterise the collection.
date: 21.10.2023 – 07.01.2023
location: Torreão Nascente da Cordoaria Nacional
About the PLMJ Foundation
The contemporary art collection of the PLMJ Foundation, established in 2001, is a non-profit corporate art collection founded by PLMJ Advogados, SP, RL. The collection consists of more than 1,400 works of contemporary art in various fields such as photography, video, installation, sculpture, painting, and drawing.
As part of its cultural philanthropy, it expresses the diversity of artistic creation in three fundamental vectors. The first is to support new generations of artists. The second, at the international level, is the relationship with and attention to the artistic production of the countries belonging to the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP). The third vector is the national and international sharing and dissemination of the collection through a programme of exhibitions and the publication of catalogues and monographs, the most recent project being the exhibition “Transition Zones”.
