Turn around. A look at the EDP Foundation Art Collection

Established in 2000, the EDP Foundation Collection is now one of the most extensive and diverse institutional collections of contemporary art in Portugal. Recognised as an important repository for understanding the artistic trends and transformations that have marked the last few decades in the country, the collection comprises around 2,500 works by more than 340 artists, including figures who stood out in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as more recent generations, particularly artists born after the 1974 Revolution. The collection highlights the diversity of languages, conceptual stances, and aesthetic orientations that characterise the contemporary landscape of artistic practices in Portugal.

Conceived as a single exhibition, which will remain open until early 2027, the show is not organised according to thematic or chronological criteria, nor by artist groups; rather the selection and assembly of the works were conceived in dialogue with the spatial and architectural characteristics of the two galleries, exploring aesthetic and conceptual affinities and tensions between artists of different generations, genres, and artistic disciplines.

“The work of José Pedro Croft (1957, Porto) plays with fragility, stability, permanence, and impermanence of the materials that give form to his pieces. In the 1990s, the artist developed a particular interest in the memory of the objects he uses, as well as in concepts of weight, lightness and balance.
The sculpture Untitled (1993) is composed of overlapping everyday objects covered in a layer of white plaster, giving them the illusion of weight and mass at odds with their materials. The shine of the aluminium gains an almost pictorial quality and a deceptive density.”

–  Carolina Marques

“Developed around the material, artistic and political testimonies of the contemporary world, Fernanda Fragateiro’s (1962, Montijo) work highlights the forms, materials, colours or ideas that build/destroy this same world: landscape, city and politics constitute a fundamental triad in her work and the protagonism of female artists in the formatting of that world (and in the necessary critical reflections about it) has become increasingly evident in her work.

At an exhibition held in 2009, the artist paraphrased Ralph Waldo Emerson, writing a politically engaged phrase on a wall where the MAAT Gallery now stands: “Landscape has no owner”. Inside, she compacted about 3,000 kilograms of brick waste into a low, delicate, suspended and mirrored volume (entitled Construir é destruir é construir [building is destroying is building], 2009). The contradiction is evident and deliberate: the brick, recovered from an abandoned factory, bears witness to the deindustrialisation and social changes that have taken place on the South Bank of the River Tagus; the mirrors dematerialise the piece, absorb the light and secure the surrounding space like a visual trap; suspended, the piece also suspends time, rising to a higher poetic platform that sublimates (and simultaneously underlines) the initial political message.” 

– João Pinharanda

Artists : Adriana Proganó, Ana Jotta, Bruno Cidra, Gabriel Abrantes, Joana Vasconcelos, João Ferro Martins, João Paulo Feliciano, João Pedro Vale and Nuno Alexandre Ferreira,  José Pedro Croft, Luisa Cunha, Maria Beatriz, Rodrigo Oliveira, Sérgio Pombo, Tiago Baptista, Álvaro Lapa, Ana Cardoso, Ana Hatherly, Ana Vieira, Ângelo de Sousa, António Areal, António Palolo, Augusto Alves da Silva, Diogo Pimentão, Eduardo Batarda, Fernanda Fragateiro, Fernando Calhau, Gonçalo Barreiros, Helena Almeida, João Onofre, João Queiroz, Joaquim Bravo, Jorge Martins, Jorge Molder, José Almeida Pereira, José Barrias, José Loureiro, José Pedro Cortes, Julião Sarmento, Leonor Antunes, Lourdes Castro, Luísa Jacinto, Manuel Baptista, Manuel Rosa, Maria Capelo, Maria José Oliveira, Mariana Gomes, Noronha da Costa, Paulo Nozolino, Pedro Calapez, Rosa Carvalho, Rui Chafes, Rui Sanches, Salomé Lamas, Sara Bichão, Sara Chang Yan, Susanne S. D. Themlitz

Curators : João Pinharanda, Margarida Chantre and Sérgio Mah

Opening Wednesday 11.02
Wednesdays to Mondays, 10am > 7pm
closed on Tuesdays
until Sunday 25.01.27

Location
MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology
Av. Brasília, Belém
1300-598 Lisbon (PT)

Read more about José Pedro Croft and Fernanda Fragateiro