Albuquerque Mendes
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PARADOXOS DEGENERADOS: ENTRE AÇÕES, PENSAMENTO E OBRAS
Curadoria/Curator: Maria de Fátima Lambert
SYNOPSIS
Along with the assumptions that since the mid 1970s organize the thinking and work of Albuquerque Mendes, this exhibition focuses on the Degenerate Art episode, an exhibition subversively curated by the German dictator. Now, the artist appropriates this concept, its causes and consequences to explain the polysemy that comes to him. The stratification of visual signals – customized stamps – mark the paintings like the tattooed numbers on the victims of the concentration camps. These condemned sites are the cloister and orthodoxy that the laxity or absence of critical opinions inject on culture and contemporary art, if authors and public give away their identity and thought. By shaping artifacts of the collective and individual imagination, the painter and performer (re)stages himself in the proposals that visitors must interpret and expand towards a lucid and poetic irony. Complementary to the exhibition and throughout the period in which the show is patent, there will be a cycle of talks to debate through the work of specialized portuguese authors all that is considered degenerate music, degenerate film, degenerate literature, history and degenerate ideologies.
BIOGRAPHY
Albuquerque Mendes, painter and performer, was born in 1953 in Trancoso (Beira Alta) and lives and works in Leça da Palmeira. From 1970 to 1979 he attended the Circle of Fine Arts of Coimbra. He showcased his work in numerous solo exhibitions nationally and internationally since 2000, in renowned galleries in the cities of Porto, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Madrid and Rome.
His work is represented in Graça Brandão Galeria, Lisbon (PT).