Contemporary Art at Fundação Serralves, Porto

Julião Sarmento:White Nights

In Serralves you will find a representative collection of Portuguese and international contemporary art. Untill March in the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art you can visit the world’s largest-ever retrospective exhibition of the work of Julião Sarmento (Lisbon, 1948). Over the last four decades, Julião Sarmento's work has achieved widespread international circulation, making him one of Portugal’s best-known contemporary artists. His numerous exhibitions over the past decade have been shown in institutions such as the Tate Modern, London (UK), the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo (Brazil), the Fundación Marcelino Botin, Santander (Spain), the Van Abbbemuseum, Eindhoven (Netherlands), and the MNCARS, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (Spain).

Sarmento's work explores themes of eroticism and sexuality, and questions concepts such as desire, absence, time and language, using different techniques - such as painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, film, photography and performance. In the inaugural session of this new exhibition, the artist will present a series of performances that have been specifically designed for this occasion, which will be performed in Serralves Villa by leading figures from the worlds of fashion, dance and other performing arts.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a major monographic publication on the work of Julião Sarmento, co-published with the prestigious German publisher, Hatje Cantz.