Hélio Oiticica
museu é o mundo
September 21, 2012–January 6, 2013
Opening: Friday, September 21, 7pm
Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon
Praça do Império, 1449-003 Lisbon, Portugal
Hours: Open daily, 10–7pm
Free admission
T +351 213 612 878
F +351 213 612 570
museuberardo [at] museuberardo.pt
The work of Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980), which in recent years has been discovered and reassessed outside Brazil, represents one of the most significant achievements of the twentieth century. The exhibition Hélio Oiticica — museu é o mundo constitutes the broadest possible retrospective of the artist, featuring 117 works, some of which are displayed in the outdoor spaces of the Museu Coleção Berardo.
In 1955, Hélio Oiticica started out on a remarkable journey. Taking neo-concrete abstraction as a starting point, he aimed to explore new ways of moving painting away from the canvas, creating devices intended to immerse the spectator, such as the Penetrables, or the Parangolés, which could be worn. His installations Tropicália and Éden gave an ethnological and political twist to concretist experiments and demanded a different kind of relationship with time and pleasure. Many of his penetrable works, which abandoned the museum in an attempt to seek new paths for painting, can be found in the exhibition along with the publication of his writings, which enable us to understand the way in which Hélio Oiticica outlined the main problematics with which subsequent artistic developments would be confronted.
Pedro Lapa, Artistic Director
Curators: Fernando Cocchiarale and César Oiticica Filho.
