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15/7/2010

Portugal Arte

Different Venues of Lisboa, Grandola, Portimao and Vila Real de Santo Antonio, Lisboa

Portugal Arte 10 EDP, a new month-long biannual art exhibition, announces its inaugural edition to debut July 16, 2010 in Lisbon and the surrounding region. Conceived by Artistic Director Stefan Simchowitz and President Miguel Carvalho, Portugal Arte 10 EDP distinguishes itself from other international art events by creating a sense of public engagement with the greater art-world. Portugal Arte 10 EDP will feature a large and ambitious program of specially commissioned public sculpture projects and site-specific installations, alongside 8 curated group exhibitions, each addressing themes relevant to contemporary life. It will be spread across Lisbon and its surrounding regions, including city squares, walkways, beach territories, and historic interior spaces.

Artists were selected through an open, international, and decentralized curatorial model engaging multiple curators, writers, artists, designers and architects, including Stefan Simchowitz, Fred Hoffmann, Paul Young, Lauri Firstenberg, Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, Johannes Van Der Beek, Martin Lilja, Cesar Garcia, Juan Delgado Calzadilla, Elvia Rosa Castro, Nelson Herrera Ysla and Garth Weiser.

The exhibition reflects this new curatorial model, as works will be presented in a manner that evokes discourse and the participation of a community. The art will engage or confront its immediate urban context by using ideas of subject, form, scale, monumentality, or experiential space. It will bring about new social and geographical understandings of the urban environment that challenge its conventions and familiarity.

PUBLIC ART PROJECTS
The cornerstone of Portugal Arte 10 EDP is a series of public art projects that will be installed throughout downtown Lisbon. Three distinct areas, Chiado, Baixa, and Avenida Liberdade, will host these works. Each area is unique in its layout, geography, and topography. Los Angeles- based architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of JohnstonMarkLee architectural firm were instrumental in examining these areas defining characteristics and placing the works of art in ways which either reinforce the urban condition, or challenges it by creating a new way of experiencing a neighborhood. Chris Burden, Faile, Yoan Capote, Sterling Ruby, Robert Melee, Ivan Capote, Ben Jones, Mustafa Hulusi, Joe Grillo, Duvier Del Dago Fernandez, Miguel Palma, Nathan Mabry, Justin Lieberman, Olaf Breuning, Marnie Weber, Miguel Arruda, Jim Drain and are among the more than one hundred artists presenting work at PortugalArte.

ADDITIONAL EXHIBITION VENUES
Portugal Pavilion - Lisboa
The Portugal Pavilion is a striking building designed by Portugal's Pritzker Award- winning architect Alvaro Siza Vieira. Its remarkable sagging concrete roof weighing 1,400 tons and measuring 167 by 223 ft is an instant attention- grabber, undulating like the sail of a ship, keeping the maritime theme of most of the district's architecture. The pavilion consists of two exhibition areas, one housing main exhibitions, the second providing a large outdoor space for national displays. The most iconic feature of the pavilion however, is a thin, curved concrete sail that creates a canopy over the ceremonial plaza. As Lisbon is an area of high sismic activity, the canopy and the building are completely separate, each with its own structural support system. At the time of construction, the National Pavilion was Lisbon’s largest urban regeneration project since rebuilding the city in the aftermath of an earthquake and tidal wave of 1775.

Public Library - Grândola Launch in 1989, the Library of Grândola has established itself as one of the most important centers of cultural diffusion of the region, providing numerous services to the population - visual arts, exhibitions, book fairs, workshops, meeting with writers, debates, concerts and other collaborative projects. Theater Tempo – Portimão Given its urban centrality, Tempo assumed itself as a meeting place in the heart of the city, promoting the public space and encouraging the sociability among different communities and between them and the visitors and artists. Centro Cultural António Aleixo – Vila Real de Santo António Located in city's historic district, the building began to house the military barracks, where the troops stationed focused the new border town. With the concentration of troops stationed in eastern Algarve, the building was converted into a market of vegetables. In the 80s, the idea was born to transform it into a place for cultural events. The Centro Cultural Antonio Aleixo opened to the public in 1998, referencing the popular poet Antonio Aleixo, born in Vila Real de Santo Antonio in 1899. The space is now inseparable from the city's cultural life.

CURATED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
In addition to contributing to the selection of artists to present work in the public component of Portugal Arte 10 EDP, the curatorial committee will be presenting a series of group exhibitions throughout Lisbon and the surrounding areas.

Points of View
curated by Stefan Simchowitz
The abundance of curatorial statements available in art exhibitions today prevails upon the curator the urge to avoid one almost completely. Simply put, Points Of View refers to all points of view as such that the artist, spectator, critic and all other participants have their own expression, analysis and experience of what is presented and seen.

All are valid and all are relative to the individual’s singular or shared experience. The intention is merely to present within a framework guided by the curator’s own personal aesthetic. Points Of View is a sample of what the curator would like to share as an experience to a wider audience. Purposefully avoiding any particular discussion about the relationship that the artwork has to any intellectual construct, Points of View states that it is up to the audience to define their experience or reaction to the curator’s choices and up to the artists to create their world within their own individual framework.

Personal Freedom
curated by Johannes Van Der Beek
Aspects of the diverse aesthetic and conceptual approaches to art making that can be found within various networks of artists will be explored in a large scale exhibition organized by the artist Johannes Van Der Beek. It will survey a notion of the personal landscape, as artists envision it as a way to reflect and manipulate their surrounding world. The various iterations that make up this series of exhibitions provide a testament to the intimate workings of creative and imaginative production. Participating artists include, Olaf Breuning, Ernesto Caivano, Trenton Duerksen, Aaron King, Jonathon Monk, Aaron Morse, Lisi Raskin, and Stephen G. Rhodes.

Serendipity
co-curated by Juan Delgado Calzadilla, Elvia Rosa Castro, and Nelson Herrera Ysla
Serendipity is an exhibition of Contemporary Cuban art that emphasizes the limitless approach to art making in the country. Serendipity displays a range of artists’ practices that result from the hybridization born out of colonial history. Artists include, Juan Carlos Alom, Alexander Arrechea, Abel Barroso, Iván Abreu, José Bedia, Los Carpinteros, Humberto Díaz, Inti Hernández, Octavio Irving, Manuel Mendive, Douglas Pérez, Carlos Quintana, and José Villa.

Faile: Temple
Brooklyn-based artists Faile will display a full-scale temple in the square of Restauradores. While Faile is well known by now for their arresting, advertising and Pop inflected prints, paintings and sculptures, “Temple” marks the duo’s migration from a more strictly visual medium into the realm of site specific environments. While its structure is the ruin, “Temple” should not be read as a memento or celebration of decadence but instead as one of collaboration and renewal.

Billboard Project
curated by Lauri Firstenberg and Cesar Garcia, LA-ART
Lauri Firstenberg and Cesar Garcia of LA-ART, Los Angeles will curate a series of site-specific billboard projects by a number of acclaimed international artists interested in using the billboard format as a mode of public address. In an effort to stage a series of propositions in the public domain, these billboard projects will address the problem of audience and the relationship between the exhibitions and the cities of Vila Real de Santo António and Grândola. Artists include Walead Beshty, Emily Halpern, Artemio, Kelly Barrie, Garth Weiser and Shana Lutker.

Inside/Outside
curated by Martin Lilja
Since the turn of the millennium, a diverse group of emerging artists based in New England and New York has been making art that is defiantly uninterested in chronology or formal rules in fine art. Embracing such art world taboos as playful figuration, cartooning, neon colors, and earnest (as opposed to ironic) appropriation of pop culture, these young rebels stand outside the mainstream, but exert a strong influence on both visual culture and their peers within the art world. This exhibition will highlight the diverse approaches to multiple themes and media. Participating artists include Tauba Auerback, Jim Drain, Ara Peterson, Eddie Martinez, Chuck Webster, Mat Brinkman, C.F., Joe Bradley, Michael Williams, Michael Mahalchick, Sarah Braman, Ben Jones, Takeshi Murata, and Cory Arcangel.

California Dreamin’
co-curated by Fred Hoffman and Paul Young
Co-organized by Fred Hoffman and Paul Young, this exhibition will feature a number of artists based in Los Angeles, California and will also include work from Portuguese artist João Louro, whose practice is inspired by the discovery of the west. Drawing on the parallel histories of expansion and exploration that defined the American frontier and the Portuguese search for the “New World,” this exhibition platform will serve an instrumental role in drawing parallels between regional and international artistic endeavors. Featured artists from Los Angeles include Sterling Ruby, Amanda Ross-Ho, Simmons & Burke, Brian Bress, Matt Connors, Erik Frydenborg, Nathan Hylden, Nathan Mabry, Justin Beal, Barry Johnston, and Stephen G. Rhodes.

Gradation,
curated by Garth Weiser
“Gradation” will present a selection of abstract painters all presently working in New York City. The project presents a variety of artists currently working within the different models for approaching the weight and history of painterly abstraction, as it can range from a more gestural language to hardedge Minimalism. Gradation will feature work from such artists as Cheryl Donegan, Patricia Treib, Philip Vanderhyden, Adam Henry, Ethan Breckenridge, Richard Aldrich, James Brittingham, Chris Dorland, and Alex Kwartler. For more details on exhibitions concept, artistic director, curators, venues, calendar, exhibitions, artists, and updates, please visit us at http://www.portugalarte.org

Note to editors
The EDP foundation is a private, non-profit organization created by EDP - Energias de Portugal, S.A. in December 2004. The EDP Foundation reinforces the EDP group's commitment to culture, science and charity, principles the Foundation has upheld since its inception and which react a dedication to remaining ahead of its time and supporting important causes in Portugal and abroad (Spain, Brasil, USA, ...) The EDP Foundation is particularly devoted to developing new artistic languages but also to studying the historical contexts of Portuguese and international art (through various awards, regular temporary exhibits and ambitious art editions), studying and disseminating issues related to energy and the environment. it also sponsors other cultural and artistic institutions promoting cultural (arts, music, dance and literature), educational and social initiatives. The Foundation plans to convert the campus at the Tejo power station into a science and cultural unit, placing a prime location in Lisbon at the disposal of the artistic, science, cultural and educational communities, as well as the general public.
http://www.fundacao.edp.pt

Media Contact: Dan Tanzilli, FITZ & CO
+1 212-627-1455 x226 / Dan@fitzandco.com

VIP Opening July 16th, 2010, 19
Pavilhão de Portugal

Official Opening Events July 17th, 2010, 15.30
at Grandola, Biblioteca Municipal

Different Venues of Lisboa, Grandola, Portimao and Vila Real de Santo Antonio

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