Rodrigo Oliveira + Fernando Lanhas

Rodrigo Oliveira

A primeira pedra (e todas as outras mais), 2011

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Fernando Lanhas, Porto 1923
P 13-66 (1966),  P 27-72 (1972), P 89-85 (1985)
Pebbles painted in oil
Inventory no.: 2348, 2350, 2349)

A primeira pedra (e todas as outras mais), 2011 is a site-specific installation that forms part of the programme "Outros Olhares – Novos Projectos”, whose starting point is a series of painted pebbles (P 13-66, P 27-72, P 89-85) by Fernando Lanhas.

Fernando Lanhas’s topicality and processes of inquiry and development, as well as the metaphorical nature of the stone as an essential element in building, made this work an essential choice. A pretext on which to approach not only one work in the collection but also the whole of the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea – Museu do Chiado as an architectural space, an exhibition site for works of art and the product of a century of different social, political and aesthetic contexts.

The intervention aims to interact with the visitor, stimulating the various dynamics that are implicit in the functioning and symbolic weight of the museum.

The piece alludes to a grid suspended in space, such as the structures that hold up buildings or the beams and pillars that define series of squares in architectural construction, which is not so very far removed from the influence of the Pombaline style and the metrics of the museum's paving. A piece of architecture within another piece of architecture, which takes on a parasitical state while imposing itself on the space through its dimensions. The constructive reference also stems from the museological devices used in the first modernist exhibitions, which incorporated T- and L-shaped systems.

The rough and accessible material of which the cardboard corners are made results in a quick and versatile construction which cannot fail to resemble a dismountable and transportable scale model, also functioning as a reference point for the constructive systems used in modernist architecture. The configuration of the piece, in an inverted ziggurat, in a state of progression from planning to construction, also calls to mind some of Le Corbusier’s drawings and developments in relation to the Modulor. The colour of the piece stems from this information, from a reflection on the colour scheme used in the Tagol silos on the south bank of the Tagus, reflecting studies in the use of colour to dematerialise a mass or architectural volume, or as visual ballast and landscaping.

The series of squares in the piece particularly recall the standardised spaces used for storing and simultaneously exhibiting works of art. The museum’s stocks are evoked in the creation of imaginary panels of absent stones, marked with the inventory numbers of works in the collection. A process of cataloguing and archiving is underway here, as if part of a building were being transplanted, stone by stone, to somewhere else, making different reconstructive combinations possible.
When all is said and done, do we know which is the first stone? And do we know the configuration of all the others?

Rodrigo Oliveira
September 2011

RODRIGO OLIVEIRA
Sintra, 1978
Currently lives and works in Lisbon

In 2003, he completed a Bachelor's degree in Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Universidade de Lisboa. During the course of his studies, he spent his last academic year at the Berlin University of Fine Arts (Universität der Künste) as part of the Erasmus programme. In this period, he took part in the Maumaus School’s Independent Study Programme of Visual Arts, where he staged his first exhibition. He subsequently continued his training at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, where he completed a Masters in Fine Arts.

His first group exhibition, which took place in 2001 at the Maumaus School, was followed by a Project Room at the Galeria Filomena Soares. He went on to hold several collective and solo exhibitions, both in Portugal and abroad, which helped to establish him as one of the most prominent Portuguese artists of his generation.

The artist is represented in both private and institutional collections.

In parallel to the exhibition “A primeira pedra (e todas as outras mais)” at the MNAC, which forms part of the “Outros Olhares” programme, the artist is exhibiting his work at the Centro de Artes de Ponte de Sôr (“Uma casa com um quadrado à parte”) and at the Quase Galeria in Porto, (“Se respeitássemos a arquitectura ainda vivíamos nas cavernas”).