Martin Dale
This publication issues forth from the exhibition O Colecionador de Belas Artes, by Sara & André, on view at Galeria Quadrum between april 9th and june 19th, 2022. It features texts by Sara & André, Sara Antónia Matos, Pedro Faro, Adelaide Duarte, João Pinharanda and Tobi Maier. As well as photographs of the exhibition, expanded upon through over 20 interviews conducted by the artists with Portuguese collectors. These stem from an open dialogue with said collectors aiming to trace a profile, and to portray the contemporary art collecting paradigm in Portugal.
“On the one hand we explicitly cite a set of 15 paintings – O Coleccionador de Belas Artes [The Fine Art Collector] – which António Areal exhibited in 1971, referring technically and formally to this series. On the other hand, the works that appear on the paintings we present here come from private collections that are based in Portugal and which were constituted during the last few decades. Thus, the set of works that appear in each composition is a result of a direct dialogue, sometimes continuous, with each of the collectors that responded to our challenge, agreeing to share with us a selection of works from their collection, of which they are particularly fond.”
– Sara & André
“Sara & André have explored issues of appropriation, authorship and legitimation, establishing networks of direct interdependence with the work of other artists and agents. Revealing more and less prevalent discursive practices and vices, the duo’s work highlights various aspects of the artistic system, in particular the mechanisms of success and notoriety.”
– Sara Antónia Matos, Pedro Faro
“O Colecionador de Belas Artes shows that Sara & André don’t just standardise collectors, in the light of António Areal’s framework and metric. When the literature criticises the scarcity of the collector’s activity and parodies collectors’ ignorance of the art works to be purchased,
in the wake of França’s writings, Sara & André call for a revision of that diagnosis, by revealing
a solid set of collectors today. The artistic duo have extended Areal’s creative process,
increasing the series in number and narrative, expanding the concept, and presenting concrete
collectors and collections to the public for the first time. Other collections could have been
added, in manifest incompleteness. However, Sara & André’s choice of O Colecionador
de Belas Artes and its unfinished nature is a clear sign of the vitality of the collecting praxis.”
– Adelaide Duarte
“How does the initiative of Sara & André operate (in the current national and international context), when they appropriate a project that was intended to comment and intervene directly in its historical period, and that was already doing so from a strategy of critical appropriation? Sara & André develop the essence of their artistic career from the appropriationist heritage of contemporary art. They do so in a context of end-of-cycle, after the cynical or parodic premises of post-modern appropriationism, and introduce a historical and/or sociological analysis of the different thematic realities that they appropriate.”
– João Pinharanda
“The colourful spectrum of the myriad collections portrayed on the front of each panel only revealed itself fully once the viewer had reached the end of Galeria Quadrum. There one was left to speculate about the men (and women) that are behind the collections. They remained black shadows. A quiz and an opaque syndrome: can we solve it by reading this book?”
– Tobi Maier
Martin Dale