When we think about shape and concept in the context of contemporary art, we understand its meanings and recognize its manifestation in an individual perspective. However, when we are confronted with the idea of swinging between them, new possibilities of interpretation arise, influenced by a set of artworks in a specific space and in a specific moment. The artistic experience is directly related with the surrounding space and with the narratives that develop through that relationship, and, sometimes, it’s the artistic object that tells its own story, introducing it in this equation, resulting in an interesting exploration of concepts and shapes in a specific space. This space lives on the various shapes that inhabit there and the artistic object, which is composed by shapes and concepts, feeds on that dynamic and repays with an aesthetic suggestion.

Entre a Forma e o Conceito is, therefore, a collective exhibition that consists in the presentation of artworks that allow us to travel between a suggestion of a narrative and a connection with the real, gaining conscience of what each artist develops, through their means of expression, in an approximation to the architectural space and temporality. This approximation to the architectural space, is particularly noticeable on the work of Fernanda Gomes and Fernanda Fragateiro. Gomes understands that a close relationship with the space where she intervenes is necessary, creating works that include the space architecture but, at the same time, end up generating new spaces inside themselves. Fragateiro’s way of thinking is related to a strong interest by avant-garde architectural practices of the 20th Century, resulting in minimalist works that intervene in the space, and that reconfigures it. Every object tells a story, and the artistic object is not an exception. There are a set of narratives that are intrinsic to these works and which are presented in different ways and approaches, questioning the function and importance of art history in contemporary art. Salomé Lamas, Ana Linhares and Elena Damiani, develop works that, at a visual and plastic level, present themselves distinct, but that engage in questions related to narrative, memory and history, questioning their conventions, and sometimes passing through the colonial past (Lamas and Linhares) or through the manipulation if history (Damiani). On the first floor of Anexo we can feel the valorisation of the shape, while we wander among the works composed by different elements. It is possible to understand the importance of matter in Pedro Tudela’s work, in which is visible the exploration of different materials that, when readjusted and stripped out of their intrinsic functions, transform into new readings. Within this assembly of materiality and relationships with shape, Emmanuel Nassar develops his work considering a constructivist thought and that settles in the improvise, the artisanal, combining Brazilian popular culture with references of conceptual, and pop art. Also, Marlena Kudlicka, in a different social and geographic context of Nassar, originates from a European avant-garde constructivist tradition and develops precise sculptures, calculated to the last details, which derive from different architectures. Entre a Forma e o Conceito, reveals the plasticity of each artist which vary between photography, drawing, painting, sculpture and cinema, and that it’s essential for understanding the different formal and conceptual approaches. By engaging at the same space, the works by these artists dialogue with each other, challenging the thought to swing between shape and concept, between space and time, between the real and narrative.

Marta Rodrigues