Paradigm Shift Serralves Collection 60’s 70’s

Paradigm Shift is the first large showing of the Serralves Foundation– Contemporary Art Museum Collection (Oporto, Portugal) ever to take place at a Spanish museum. Built by Alvaro de Siza, the museum was opened to the public on the 6th June 1999, and nowadays it is a worldwide reference for the international art scene, not only for the important collection it has amassed, but for the wide and varied scope of its exhibitions of the highest regard.

The exhibition, focusing on a selection of the principal contemporary art collection, surveys a period of shifts in artistic language—the 60's and 70's—that ushered in the new contemporary. With Paradigm Shift, MUSAC opens its exhibition space to a referential era, the decades spanning the 1960's and 70's. This period has been crucial to understanding the most up-to-date artistic practices—mainly from 1989 - present—that represent the core of our exhibition programming here at the Castilla y León Contemporary Art Museum.

Paradigm Shift presents an overview of a period that redefined the nature of art and its place in life, creating a new grammar that, even today, establishes the perimeters of what we consider to be contemporary art. In the mid 1960's, within a context of social and political change, a revolution in artistic practice broke loose both on form and content levels. From this, a myriad of concepts would emerge: brainchildren of the prevailing social milieu. During these years, the concept “avant-garde” thus becomes comprehensive, forcing the broader aspects of life to seep into artistic experience. At this time, the condition of an artwork is redefined as both an interaction with life and a criticism of the autonomy, the essence and inwardness of art that translates into minimalist experiences.

In that way, Paradigm Shift is organised around a number of conceptual nexus which would lay the foundations for defining artistic practice from this period into our days.

Among other practices, the idea of landscape are revised by currents such as land art, which makes use of the framework and materials of nature to redefine the genre; a social-spatial revision and critique of architecture and urban planning by way of new practices such altering the perception of edifications in their environment.

During this period, the use of new materials also becomes popular, sculpture specially, either inferior materials or those recycled from pre-existing objects, such as in arte povera or the use of simple forms and materials such as in American minimalism.

Paradigm Shift Serralves Collection 60’s 70’s
Künstler: Vito Acconci, Helena Almeida, Armando Alvess, Giovanni Anselmo, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Artur Barrio, António Barros, Lothar Baumgarten,  Bernd und Hilla Becher , Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Fernando Calhau, Alberto Carneiro, Manuel Casimiro, Lourdes Castro, Jan Dibbets,  VALIE EXPORT , Hans-Peter Feldmann, Hamish Fulton, Anna Bella Geiger,  Gilbert & George , Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Ana Hatherly, Alex Hay, Sanja Ivekovic, Joan Jonas, Imi Knoebel, Jannis Kounellis, David Lamelas, Alvaro Lapa, Gordon Matta-Clark, Cildo Meireles, Robert Morris, Leonel Moura, Matt Mullican, Antoni Muntadas, Bruce Nauman, Maria Nordman, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Gina Pane, Lygia Pape, Jorge Pinheiro, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Vitor Pomar, Martha Rosler, Dieter Roth, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Juliao Sarmento, Gerry Schum, Antonio Sena, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Angelo Ferreira de Sousa, Francesc Torres, Ana Vieira, Lawrence Weiner, Hanna Wilke, Gilberto Zorio

Kuratoren: Helena Lopez Camacho, Filipa Loureiro