Overview
The exhibition VOID: Júlio Pomar and Julião Sarmento continued the Atelier-Museum's exhibition program that, every year, seeks to cross the work of Júlio Pomar with that of other artists, in order to establish new relationships between the painter's work and contemporaneity.
Thus, this exhibition was conceived, since its inception, as a specific intervention in the space of the Atelier-Museum, where Júlio Pomar and Julião Sarmento, through paintings and drawings, explored the concept of “Void”, having been the guest artist drawing the graphic image of the exhibition.
“Void” can be understood as an empty space; something that disappears into emptiness; that is experienced as loss or deprivation; a gap or opening; a vacancy or a vacuum...
Julião Sarmento showed a series of works on canvas and on paper, with several literary references, without any figuration. Júlio Pomar showed us paintings and drawings, made in the 1960s, about the Paris Metro, and drawings of different natural elements.
During the exhibition a catalog was published [edited by the Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar/ Documenta] with essays and images of the works installed in the space.
Accompanying each of these exhibitions, we had the edition of an interview with each of the invited artists, carried out over an extended period of time, allowing us to understand, through each author's own voice, the motivations and fundamentals inherent to their works.
Julião Sarmento is one of the Portuguese artists with the greatest international projection, having, since the 1970s, made a singular journey around the representation of the human figure within an ambiguous territory, generally associated with desire, violence, compulsiveness and sexuality, using and combining different media such as photography, video, installation, painting and engraving. After a stay in London (1964-1965), Julião Sarmento's journey begins with attending the Architecture course at the Lisbon Superior School of Fine Arts (ESBAL), between 1967 and 1974, which never ends.
Photos: António Jorge Silva / Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar
