Julião Sarmento (1948-2021)
Some Rethorical Structures To Be Identified In This Image 2002 Mixed media on canvas Signed, titled, dated on back 190 x 190 cm Provenance: > Galerie de France, Paris (label on back)
> Sean Kelly Gallery, New York (label on back)
Bibliography: > Ombres exhibition catalog, Éditions Galerie de France, Paris, 2008
Exhibitions: > Ombres, Galerie de France, Paris, November 8, 2008 - January 24, 2009
> Juliao Sarmento - Silhouettes noires 2002-2003, Galerie de France, Paris, May 19 - July 4, 2009 He is one of the world's best-known Portuguese artists.
A pioneer of conceptual art, art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist says he has "changed Portugal", "very few artists transform an entire country".
In a Portugal marked by revolution, the visual artist proposes innovative works combining sensuality and transgression. As this painting illustrates, women are at the heart of his thinking. She is merely a faceless silhouette. The focus is on the body. The representation of this body is sometimes stereotyped, as Sarmento seeks to explore the way in which the viewer possesses, sometimes perversely, the subject of the work. Inspired by Michel Foucault and the writings of Maria Gabriela Llansol, Sarmento pushes the limits of the medium.
"I believe in negative space, the space outside the frame, as an active space of possibility. After all, to be human is to constantly desire, imagine or create that which we cannot see or experience."
Today, his work is exhibited in the world's leading museums (MoMA and Guggenheim in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris and Tate Modern in London).
(MLD)
