Modern & Contemporary Art Exhibitions in Porto

The Collection of the Leal Rios Foundation, assembled by brothers Manuel and Miguel Leal Rios since 2003, was partially deposited at Serralves in 2021. This body of works is highly significant for several reasons: because it represents a genuine line of thought (a very particular perspective on the art of the last two decades), and can therefore be identified as a collection in its own right (which is very different from a mere gathering of works); because it brings to Serralves a group of works by artists who were already part of the Collection (through acquisitions or previous deposits), adding elements that allow for a better understanding of their respective trajectories and thus helping the Foundation to achieve one of the major goals of its collecting activity, namely the creation of substantial bodies of work by specific artists; because it adds to the Serralves Collection artists and works that broaden and enrich perspectives on artistic production over recent decades; and because it far exceeds the domestic scale that is inevitably associated with Portuguese private collections—something that can be partly explained by the establishment of a Foundation that has operated alongside the collection and that, since 2011, has had a physical space in Lisbon where works could be exhibited, stored, and conserved (which does not prevent the fact that a significant number of the works presented in Auto dos Anfitriões, whose installation requires genuine museological conditions—installation teams and exhibition spaces—are being shown, to the public but also to the collectors themselves, for the first time since their acquisition). The title of this exhibition takes up the name of a theatrical play by the sixteenth-century Portuguese poet Luís Vaz de Camões (adapted from a text by the Roman-era poet Plautus, which has remained a source of inspiration for playwrights, stage directors, composers, and film directors to this day) and, with it, a history of derivations, appropriations, and deviations. It immediately evokes three of the characteristics that distinguish the exhibition of the Leal Rios Foundation Collection: first, it underscores Serralves’s hospitable vocation and adds meaning to the idea that its Collection is a “collection of collections”; second, it argues for the confluence of times and geographies (the result of those “derivations, appropriations, and deviations”) as one of the shared features of dramaturgy and contemporary art; finally, it invokes theatre—and certain texts associated with this discipline—as a way of shedding light on particular aspects of contemporary artistic practices. The exhibition also includes work by Francisco Tropa, represented by Galeria Quadrado Azul. Produced by the Serralves Foundation — Museum of Contemporary Art, the exhibition is curated by Ricardo Nicolau.