Overview
The GAM of Turin dedicates a particular tribute to the Portuguese artist Julião Sarmento, with the setting up of an exceptional exhibition that inaugurates the third chapter of Dialoghi , the exhibition project that aims to establish a dialogue between established and active artists on the international contemporary scene and selected works from the permanent collections.
The exhibition, set up in the spaces of the GAM Underground Project on an area of over 1000 square meters, constitutes an important recognition of the artist's work, more than 15 years after his first and only exhibition in a museum space in Italy, the Galleria d'Arte Moderna of Bologna.
The development of Sarmento's artistic research is presented in GAM according to a rigorous curatorial approach developed with thematic criteria , which analyzes his work with a critical eye. It will start from the sequences of the works that revolve around the theme of the female figure and the object, to conclude with the works dedicated to architecture, including the two videos Cromlech of 2010 and ROC (40 plus one) of 2011 where the combination of woman and architecture is recomposed.
On display a selection of about 30 works, among the most significant in his artistic production, give an account of the totalizing vision of the world, offered by Sarmento through different means: photography , painting and, in recent times, sculpture . The works on display cover the artist's entire production, from the late 1970s to his most recent works.
In the context of Dialoghi , Julião Sarmento has chosen, from among the works of the museum's collection, two different "models" inspiring his artistic research: the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi and the American artist Sol Lewitt , two apparently distant artists who retain both a solid formal research, a characteristic that Sarmento considers both a starting point and a necessary arrival point. At the center of the exhibition the confrontation with the two masters is witnessed by the large White Veil triptych , created specifically for the exhibition at the GAM , placed in dialogue with Complex Form # 52 by Sol Lewitand, on the opposite wall, with a selection of 12 works by Giorgio Morandi - delicate and intense pages in watercolor and pencil - and a pair of painted still lifes .
The infinite variations of Morandi on the painted page , the analyzes of forms, volume and space by Lewitt have attracted the attention of Sarmento, who has always aimed at 'combining' the work on the detail of the representation and the maintenance of a superior insert such analysis. A narrative reference , a continuous allusion to something else that seems to emerge from the images. Each of his works seems to ask the observer something more, the necessary completion for his (provisional) understanding.
