Overview
The work of Portuguese artist Julião Sarmento (Lisbon, 1948), one of the most remarkable and representative creators of international contemporary art, has arrived in Galicia thanks to the Fundación Luis Seoane. The exhibition Juliao Sarmento. Guest or Host? is a co-production by FLS and CAAM (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Atlantic Centre of Modern Art).
It has been curated by David Barro, art critic and director of Fundación Luis Seoane. This is the first big solo show that Sarmento has had in Galicia. There are close to thirty pieces in different formats like painting, sculpture, illustration, photography, video and installation, which go from the early eighties to the present, in a effort to show the audience the multifaceted nature of his work. The name of the show, Guest or Host?, alludes to the inability to determine the place that the audience takes when confronted with Julião Sarmento’s pieces, particularly his performances, where the artist himself takes on the role of host by setting the scene, but he is also a guest, as he remains outside of it. The exhibition was designed as a walk through some of the recurring elements of his work like erotism, memory or desire, which are filtered through different cultural references, especially from literature and film, from Marguerite Duras to James Joyce, from Raymond Carver to Pina Bausch or Atom Egoyan, to name a few, all with a subtle or more evident presence in the exhibition.
