Philippe Parreno: A Time Coloured Space

The Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art presents A Time Coloured Space, a major exhibition by French artist Philippe Parreno, his first in Portugal. The exhibition will span 13 rooms, across two floors, occupying the Museum’s entire building.

A Time Coloured Space is conceived around the idea of the counterpoint, or ritornello, a principle whereby a particular passage is repeated at regular interludes within a musical arrangement to create compositional meaning, and structured on the mathematical model of the fugue. Governed by a similar method, A Time Coloured Space is determined not by its “objects,” but by the regularity and rhythm of their appearance, featuring some of Parreno’s most emblematic work dating back to the 1990s.

Throughout his practice, Parreno has redefined the exhibition experience by exploring its possibilities as a coherent “object” and a medium in its own right, rather than as a collection of individual works. To this end, he conceives his exhibitions as a scripted space in which a series of events unfold. Placed within the philosophical framework of Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition (1968), each of the exhibition’s 13 rooms is a recurrence of the previous, differentiated only by variations in colour and arrangement. As the past and the future are inscribed into the present, the exhibition becomes an automaton, a factory in which to engineer these variables, and a form of imitation becomes a new invention.

Among the works that will form part of Parreno’s dramaturgy for Serralves are Speech Bubbles (1997–ongoing), Fraught Times: For Eleven Months of the Year it’s an Artwork and then December it’s Christmas (2008–16), an ongoing series of aluminium sculptures cast as snow-covered Christmas trees, and more than 180 of Parreno’s ink drawings, created between 2012 and 2015. The Auditorium of the Museum will be transformed into a form of “cinéma en permanence.”

A recent addition to the Serralves Museum’s Collection, Quasi Objects: Marquee (cluster). Disklavier Piano. My Room is a Fish Bowl (2014) will serve as the exhibition’s master of ceremonies.

On Friday, February 3, to mark the launch of the exhibition, pianist Mikhail Rudy will perform Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Fugue, No. 24 in D-Minor.”

Philippe Parreno: A Time Coloured Space is curated by Suzanne Cotter, Director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, assisted by curator Filipa Loureiro. 

A specially commissioned book titled Conversation: A Script with Philippe Parreno by Adam Thirlwell, is being published on the occasion of the exhibition.

A programme of tours and talks accompanies the exhibition.

Also on view:

Ana Manso: Yo-yo  
February 24–May 7, 2017

Ana Manso (Lisbon, 1984) is one of the most compelling painters working today in Portugal. The exhibition presents a selection of paintings from the last two years and a specially commissioned mural. Yo-yo is integrated in the Contemporary Projects programme, a dynamic, responsive platform for the presentation of the work of some of the most relevant contemporary artists active today.

For further information and image requests, please contact Marta Morais: m.morais [​at​] serralves.pt.  

About Serralves​
The Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art is the foremost museum for contemporary art in Portugal, and one of Europe’s most renowned institutions for contemporary art and culture. Uniquely sited on the grounds of the Serralves Foundation, which also comprises a park and the Serralves Villa, a landmark art deco building, the Museum designed by Álvaro Siza opened in 1999. Through its exhibitions, collection, publications, performing arts, and public programmes, the Museum fosters the understanding and appreciation of contemporary art and culture in Portugal and around the world.