The cycle to which this exhibition belongs was proposed by the MNAA in 2012 to the EDP Foundation, and has since been produced by the DuplaCena/Horta Seca team. This year's edition, the project's fourth, is curated by João Pinharanda, head curator of the EDP Foundation.

The photographers (Fernando Guerra, João Carmo Simões, Nuno Cera, Paulo Catrica, Teresa Santos and Pedro Tropa) were invited to explore the notion of a Catalogue. Not the kind of systematic, objective Catalogue that enumerates the pieces that Museums have on display and in their vaults, but a Catalogue conceived as a book that reminds visitors of the pieces on display and their locations (or introduces them to those unfamiliar with them), besides showing the building's place in the city.

The selected pieces shown here are just a draft. The artistic outlook that governs this project demands the embracing of thematic overlaps, of evasions and deviations of meaning, of the critical and ironic areas in each individual's expression. The building is photographed as an attempt to understand the times and architectural bodies that overlap or merge inside it; as a desire to understand the rapport between 'inside' and 'outside', the varying thicknesses of its skin, the balance of its volumes and weights, the coherence or disconnection of its articulations. Outside: the garden, the river, the city (now dazzling, now negligible). Inside: the passing of time, mirrored in the historic sequencing of the exhibits but also in the architectural details, in the design of the display furniture, in the various set-ups of the rooms. The MNAA is about to enter a major cycle of renovation. But each renovation always preserves part of the past. In a near future, via this Catalogue, we will achieve a good perception of the gilding of time in the plays of continuity, overlapping and separation that make up the Museums and the World alike.


CURATOR
João Pinharanda


Opening May 16th at 9h30p.m.
With Vítor Belanciano