Modus Operandi
Build our traces II, 2010. Photographs, 10 x 15 cm each. Ed. 1/5.
Fundaçao Serralves +info
The exhibition brings together works that have been incorporated into the Serralves Collection since it was launched in 1989. It reflects specific experimental or transdisciplinary approaches and includes conceptual and formal themes that convey the attitudes, contexts and concerns that marked art production since the 1960s.
The title comes from a work by Joseph Kosuth, Modus Operandi (1968). The term, used in psychanalysis for the subliminal function of the unconscious, is used by the artist to highlight the self-reflexive potential of psychanalysis and its resemblance to art’s conceptual processes. Here, the concept is applied in an expanded way: the subject of each piece is not necessarily the represented motif, or the artist’s subjectivity, but the modus operandi which represents an internalized system of pre-established beliefs and patterns — a notion that has been challenged, or even subverted by the artists featured here.
Carlos Bunga’s works, Build our Traces I and Build our Traces II (2010), are fragile records of sand buildings made by the artist as he questions the tension between the ephemeral nature of the structures and their apparent eternalising through photography, while Intento de conservación IV [Attempt at Conservation IV] (2015), questions humankind’s obsession with eternity and immortality, demonstrating that any attempts at conservation will prove useless in the long run.
By applying an intersectional vision, the aim is to elucidate the narrative heterogeneity of contemporary art production, while enunciating a reflection on how today’s art also anticipates its own future.
Curator:. Miguel von Hafe Pérez
2021. Oporto, Portugal.
