ARTE LISBOA 2008

Preview & Vernissage: 19th November, from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.

General Public: 20th to 24th November, from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m.

ARTE LISBOA confirms year after year as being an exclusive platform for promoting the most recent art, offering an ample exhibition of galleries and artists, consolidated and emerging, well known in the international context. On the other hand, being the only Portuguese contemporary art fair, ARTE LISBOA bids for an exhaustive cultural programme which annually includes a CYCLE OF DEBATES with personalities of the European scene, and a section of Project Rooms of excellent quality.

In its next edition the PROJECT ROOMS section curatorship guided by the international curator PACO BARRAGÁN of recognized merits in the prestigious worldwide circuit of contemporary art fairs, there will be ten projects of the following artists:

Rui Macedo (PT) - ART FORM (PT) Rodrigo Oliveira (PT) - Galeria Filomena Soares (PT) Toño Barreiro (SP) - Casaborne (SP) Lidia Benavides (SP) - Estiarte (SP) Chus García-Fraile (SP) - METTA (SP) Sara & André (PT) - 3 + 1 Arte Contemporânea (PT) Fabrizio Matos (PT) - MCO Arte Contemporânea (PT) Inês Botelho (PT) - Galeria Filomena Soares (PT) Ruth Root (USA) - Marta Cervera (SP) Steve Schepens (B) - Brot und Spiele Galerie (GERMANY)

Simultaneously to the many artworks exhibited representing the most varied artistic trends and techniques, during ARTE LISBOA other presentations of a very stimulating program of exhibitions and cultural initiatives of the agenda of the Portuguese scene are foreseen.

Painting and other stories Paco Barragán

Like no other artistic platforms, the art fairs provide us with the latest and most audacious art novelties. Painting is back in fashion assuming a leading role. If during the 90's the motto was "everything counts except painting", today motto is "everything counts if it is painting". Nevertheless, we do need to question, what type of painting?

Painting and other stories is the conceptual script that supports and leads the "Project Rooms" section of ARTE LISBOA. Paining and other stories gather a group of proposals that assess and question the figurative environment, from the formal - Chus García-Fraile, Ines Botelho, Lidia Benavides, Toño Barreiro, Fabrizio Matos - and the conceptual - Sara + Andre, Steve Schepens, Rui Macedo or Rodrigo Oliveira, Ruth Root - point of view, anticipating within this new awareness the continuous reflection of painting that I prefer to mention as "extended painting" and that could be defined as the "relationship between painting and other elements" such as photography, video, execution, performance, sculpture and digital - paintings that despite their traditional finish, become bi-dimensional on oil and acrylic, displaying the intervention of tools and elements borrowed from the Internet, digital cameras, scanners, Photoshop... - and on any other type of support (oil, acrylic, paper, DVD, plastic, wall, ...).

This mutating concept underlies in the fact that the current painting practice is not restricted to its own referential but to a broader concept of culture of image in the strategies of conception and reception that lie within.

There's no doubt that painting is a state of mind as it is not only concerned with how it is executed, in a new framework where the technological and mass culture ha transformed our way of being and experimenting the world that surround us. Irretrievably this is the reflection that shapes the various proposals of Painting and other stories.

ARTE LISBOA 2008

PROJECT ROOMS section
Kurator: Paco Barragan
Künstler: Rui Macedo, Rodrigo Oliveira, Tono Barreiro, Lidia Benavides, Chus Garcia Fraile, Sara & Andre, Fabrizio Matos, Ines Botelho, Ruth Root, Steve Schepens