Covering two areas of Museu de Aveiro/Santa Joana, Imaginário Coletivo, curated by Sandra Vieira Jürgens, gathers works from the State Collection of Contemporary Art in the 2024 Portuguese Capital of Culture. Up-and-coming names are enhanced by the presence of established authors, illustrating the ability of this growing collection to increasingly cover national and international contemporary art.

The exhibition opens in a conventional, symmetrical space, similar to a corridor. We see works of art that constitute a statement of the exhibition itself. For one, note Keith Haring’s Portrait of Joseph Beuys (1986), a small serigraph where two of the biggest names in post-modernism meet face-to-face with Ana Hatherly (from the series Pavão Negro, 1992), a work brimming with gestures that are closely related to the strokes on and under the representation of Beuys’ face. The route along this corridor is built on these correspondences, which are primarily formal. We can see the clear and interesting relationship between Fernando Lanhas and Donald Judd, the closeness between Belén Uriel and Álvaro Lapa or the way in which Manuel Casimiro’s work becomes a possible galaxy for Rui Sanches’ work, on the opposite wall.

Heading into a slightly wider area, this initial path takes us to Luis Lázaro Matos’ Tomber Dans Le Lac (2018), featuring an acrylic on canvas and a video that shares this space with the dialogue between Paulo Brighenti and Joana Escoval, Sem título, from the series Uma estátua rodida pelo mar (2019) and Living Metals V (2018), respectively. Tomber Dans Le Lac, a French expression meaning to fall into a world of emotions, is a work about awe and its dangers, particularly focussing on the figure of Louis II of Bavaria^[1]. The key character in both the video and the painting is a moray eel.

The aquatic element, cutting across the pieces already mentioned and which are contiguous to them, also extends to Henrique Pavão’s One Last Longing (2020). Consisting of recordings of different spaces (dams, monuments, rooms), times and realities, this video triggers the sensation that we are witnessing an internal conflict of dreamlike proportions, where the movement of the feline and the rush of the water are abysmal, gut-wrenching moments, far from a surface, or rather clarity.

This first exhibition group also includes works by Ana Silva, Paula Rego, Bruce McLean, Andreia Santana and Julião Sarmento. If the last four bring up issues related to figurativism, the first reveals a textile language whose formal connection is greater in the second section. We can also look at A Pyramid (1986), by Sol LeWitt and, further on, with a clearly interstitial position, between nuclei, Claire de Santa Coloma’s Surround (2018-2019).

The second moment happens in a significantly larger area. The works presented here enhance the artistic representativeness of this exhibition, reinforcing this postmodern mapping, especially in national terms, naturally considering the names mentioned above. Fernando Calhau’s serial painting meets Lourdes Castro’s ability to work with light. Joaquim Rodrigo’s reimagined figurative approach is close to Joaquim Bravo’s geometric abstractionism, always filled with gestures that take us back to the beginning of the road. There is a photograph by João Tabarra nearby, an autonomous work by Cristina Ataíde that fills the space in a particular connection with Rui Horta Pereira’s work and another spatial piece by Maria Trabulo. On one of the walls, two sublime paintings by João Marçal: by resorting to bus seats as the object of his trade, the viewer’s position is switched. We are suddenly gazing at everyday life, the commotion, the immensity of the nothingness that sometimes entails waiting. Tito Mouraz, Carlos Bunga, Graça Pereira Coutinho, Rigo 23, Luísa Correia Pereira and Manuela Marques also add to this Portuguese art narrative in this second section of the exhibition, which also features works by Allan Sekula, Matt Mullican and Peter Zimmermann. A certain sense of consecration is latent throughout the exhibition.

To be visited until September 22.

^[1] https://www.lazaromatos.com/Tomber-Dans-Le-Lac.