Thematic Visit: "Challenges in the Conservation and Installation of Works of Art in Museums"

Sun, May 18 15h30

Where

Gallery 4

Price

Free admission on presentation of ticket to the exhibition + visit on the day, from 10am.

Duration 60 min

Capacity Subject to capacity

How to participate

Pre-registration at mep@macam.pt

Contemporary art museums are increasingly dealing with complex works of art made up of several parts and different materials, which often means challenging assemblies. Therefore, the existence of assembly instructions that include photographs, videos or annotations is crucial for the conservation and exhibition of the works.

Berlinde De Bruyckere's No Life Lost II (2015), which consists of three life-size horses in a glass vitrine, required a coordinated and demanding assembly. Although the work came with instructions, many doubts and questions arose, which were discussed with the assembly technicians. After the assembly process, the instructions were completed to ensure their preservation and assembly in the future.

This visit aims to present these and other issues essential to the conservation and installation of works of art in museums.

Visit with Sofia Gomes, Collection Manager.

Berlinde De Bruyckere

Berlinde de Bruyckere was born in 1964 in Ghent, Belgium, where she continues to live and work. The daughter of a butcher, she was brought up in a Catholic institution and went on to study at the LUCA School of Arts in Belgium. She began her artistic career between the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Heavily influenced by Christian iconography, the butcher's shop environment, Ovid's mythology, Flemish and German Renaissance painting, and Pasolini's cinema, Berlinde de Bruyckere's sculptural work summons up a conception of the body based on metamorphosis and the ambivalence of states, which her drawings also accompany.

Human or equine, the bodies sculpted by the artist using wax, pigment, animal skins, hair, and fabrics on metal, wood or glass bases configure moments of drama and eroticism that grow alongside irresolvable conflicts between life and death, protection and threat. In these suffering bodies, from which a haunting sensuality emanates, the great dramas of the world are also lurking.

Highlights include the solo exhibitions We are all Flesh, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; The Wound, Arter, Istanbul (2012); In the Flesh, Kunsthaus Graz (2013); The Embalmer, Kunsthaus Bregenz/Kunstraum Dornbirn; Penthesilea, Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg (2015); Suture, Leopold Museum, Vienna (2016); Embalmed, Kunsthal Aarhus (2017); Sara Hilden Art Museum, Tampere (2018); ALETHEIA, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2019); Plunder / Ekphrasis, MO. CO. Montpellier Contemporain (2022). Exhibitions in dialogue with other artists include Mysterium Leib. Berlinde De Bruyckere im Dialog mit Cranach und Pasolini, Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle/Kunstmuseum Bern (2011) and Philippe Vandenberg & Berlinde De Bruyckere. Innocence is precisely: never to avoid the worst, De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg/La Maison Rouge - Fondation Antoine de Galbert, Paris (2012/2014). She has participated in the Venice Biennale (2003), Berlin Biennale (2006), Gwangju Biennale (2010) and Istanbul Biennale (2017), and represented Belgium at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. In 2015, she received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Ghent.

Her work is represented in various institutional collections around the world.

Sofia Nunes