PARAGONE: What’s with mediums today?: INTERNATIONAL GROUP SHOW

The PARAGONE exhibition offers a guided tour program that promotes the rediscovery in three stages of a historical heritage—unknown to many—linked to the city of Lisbon’s water supply: Cape Verde Cultural Center; Water Museum - Barbadinhos Steam Pumping Station and Patriarchal Reservoir. 

 

"PARAGONE: What's with mediums today?" presents a very particular reflection on the notion of "mediums" in current artistic practice. Through the renewal and explorative deconstruction of the ancestral debate over the hierarchical classification of artistic disciplines in the early modern era, the PARAGONE art exhibition reveals how long-established boundaries between arts and crafts are now becoming eminently permeable. 

 

Curated by Graça Rodrigues, Katherine Sirois, Sónia Ribeiro and Ricardo Barbosa Vicente, this exhibition comprises the third chapter of a broader curatorial project of the contemporary art gallery THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE, ongoing since 2019, focusing on concepts of materiality and immateriality in the field of contemporary art. 

 

Reflecting on the question of the "medium" in contemporary art discourse, this exhibition explores current trends towards the construction of formal unities independent of the compartmentalising ideas concerning purity of medium. Such compartmentalisation has previously ensured the historical position of works as art. The new trends in this exhibition, however, assert themselves either through experimentation with the practice of technical addition, or through the recovery and integration of remote practices of artistic production. The exhibition showcases a renewed approach to representation in contemporary art. This approach questions the historical system of categorisation and hierarchisation for arts, a system that seems increasingly out of step with the times, particularly with respect to canonical norms.

Thus, the PARAGONE exhibition challenges traditional criteria and judgments of aesthetic quality, expressing the pronounced philosophical ambition to problematise artistic practices. Through its three stage exhibition - Centro Cultural Cabo Verde, Barbadinhos Steam Pumping Station and Patriarchal Reservoir - "PARAGONE: What's with mediums today?" explores a significant conjunction of media, highlighting works by artists from a wide variety of cultural milieus and geographical regions - including Algeria, South Africa, Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Nigeria, Portugal, Democratic Republic of the Congo, United Kingdom and São Tomé and Príncipe - whose creative practices cross spatial and technical boundaries.

 

The PARAGONE exhibition is taking place in the wake of the United Nations Water Conference 2023, and it aims to contribute essential reflections on sustainable water management policies. Moving away from the long-cherished ivory tower ideal of art for art’s sake, this exhibition is anchored to the pragmatic issue of water management, a vital concern that has always been and remains at the center of individuals' lives, both in their practical day to day and in their imaginative flights of fancy.

 

António Faria, Bento Oliveira, Bev Butkow, Carlos Noronha Feio, Carolina Ponte, Expanded Eye, Gonçalo Mabunda, Jacira, Ondjaki e Jordi Burch, Katharien de Villiers, Lizette Chirrime, Luís Damião, Manuela Pimentel, Marcelino Santos, Maya Touam, Mónica Mindelis, Oleandro Pires Garcia, Patrick Bongoy, Paulo Kapela, Pedro Pires, Reinata Sadimba, René Tavares, Ricardo Piedade, Salomé Nascimento, Samuel Noron, Vanessa Barragão, Yuran Henrique, Rosana Ricalde.