PHILIPPE PARRENO: A TIME COLOURED SPACE

from 04 FEB 2017 to 07 MAY 2017
The Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art presents A Time Coloured Space, a major exhibition by French artist Philippe Parreno, his first in Portugal. Curated by the Director of the Museum, Suzanne Cotter, the exhibition will span all thirteen rooms of the Museum, across two floors, and extending to the Museum’s Auditorium. A Time Coloured Space is structured on the mathematical model of the fugue, and conceived around the idea of the counterpoint, or ritournelle, a principle, whereby a particular passage is repeated at regular interludes within a musical arrangement to create compositional meaning. Governed by a similar method, A Time Coloured Space is determined not by its ‘objects’, but by the regularity and rhythm of their appearance. The exhibition features some of Parreno’s most emblematic work dating from the 1990s to the present and new works created specifically for the context. Throughout his practice, Parreno has redefined the exhibition experience by exploring its possibilities as a coherent ‘object’ and a medium in its own right, rather than as a collection of individual works. To this end, he conceives his exhibitions as a scripted space in which a series of events unfolds. Placed within the philosophical framework of Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition (1968), each of the exhibition’s thirteen rooms is a recurrence of the last, differentiated only by variations in colour and arrangement. By introducing these recurring variables, Parreno takes the ritournelle principle beyond its musical understanding to what Deleuze described as ‘a repetition of the different’. As the past and the future are inscribed into the present, the exhibition becomes an automaton, a factory in which to engineer these variables, and a form of imitation becomes a new invention.Among the works included are Parreno’s Speech Bubbles (1997 and ongoing), helium-filled balloons in the shape of cartoon speech bubbles. Empty of words, they congregate and hover on the ceiling of the space they inhabit. Also returning is Fraught Times: For Eleven Months of the Year it’s an Artwork and then December it’s Christmas (2008-2016), an ongoing series of aluminium sculptures cast as snow-covered Christmas trees.More than 200 of Parreno’s ink drawings, created between 2012 and 2016, and the series of screen prints titled Fade To Black will also be on display. A series of light objects: AC/DC Snakes and Happy Ending will also punctuate the space.A recent addition to the Serralves Museum’s permanent collection, the spectacular light work Quasi Objects: Marquee (cluster) will be installed in the auditorium foyer, signalling the cinema’s presence. The Auditorium of the Museum will be transformed into a form of cinéma en permanence.
On Friday 3 February, to mark the launch of the exhibition, pianist Mikhail Rudy will perform Shostakovich’s Fugue, No. 24 in D-Minor. For the duration, the composition will be repeated on the Disklavier piano by a computer programme attempting to learn the musical score, in a continued iteration and reprise that will in turn activate lights, a revolving wall, and window blinds that permeate the exhibition’s framework.
‘Philippe Parreno: A Time Coloured Space’ is organized by the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, and is accompanied by a publication written by Adam Thirwell in collaboration with Philippe Parreno and designed by Frith Studio, London.

Installation views, "Philippe Parreno: A Time Coloured Space” - Photos: © Andrea Rossetti
Related Activities OPENING: 3 FEB (FRI), 22H00
In the presence of the artist and pianist Mikhail Rudy, who will launch the exhibition with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fugue No 24 in D Minor. The Auditorium bar and the Museum Bookshop are open for the exhibition preview. GUIDED-VISITS
12 FEB (SUN), 12H00Guided visit to the exhibition by Rita Faustino, educator(portuguese)More information here
25 FEB (SAT), 03:30pm Guided visit in Portuguese Sign Language by LaredoMore information here
02 APR (SUN), 12H00Guided visit by Andreia Coutinho, educator(portuguese)More information here
06 MAY (SAT), 05:00PMMUSIC AND CONTEMPORARY ART with Fernando Miguel JalôtoMore information here CONVERSATIONS AND DEBATES
04 FEB (SAT). 11:30AMIntroduction to the exhibition with Suzanne CotterMore information here
18 FEB (SAT), 05:00PMA LOOK TO CONTEMPORARY ART with Sofia Ponte, investigatorMore information here
18 MAR (SAT), 05:00PMA LOOK TO CONTEMPORARY ART with Sofia Ponte, investigatorMore information here
22 APR (SUN), 05:00PMA LOOK TO CONTEMPORARY ART with Sofia Ponte, investigatorMore information here
VISIT-WORKSHOP
05 MAR (SUN), 11:00AMWORKS IN CONVERSATION for families with Raquel Sambade and Sónia Borges, educatorsMore information here
26 MAR (SUN), 11:00AMWORKS IN CONVERSATION for families with Raquel Sambade and Sónia Borges, educatorsMore information here
30 APR (SUN), 05:00PMWORKS IN CONVERSATION for families with Raquel Sambade and Sónia Borges, educatorsMore information here EXCLUSIVE MEETING FOR AMIGOS DE SERRALVES
23 MAR (THU), 07:00PMExclusive meeting for Amigos de Serralves Filipa LoureiroMore information here Notes to Editors: Artist’s statement About the publication About the artist An exhibition as a spatial counterpoint, a Ritournelle as a machine:
"The Ritournelle involves an operation of movement that consists of arranging (or assembling) several components that make up a base for components to enter into modulation, a movement that temporarily unites multiple forces.An important element of the exhibition is that it is not determined by its objects (materials and forms), but by the regularity and the rhythm of their appearance. It is thus necessary to go beyond the musical understanding of the Ritournelle, associated with repetition as the reiteration of an object, in order to highlight the mechanism of intermodulation between the fragments of non-formed and formed material.The Ritournelle is therefore a small factory for generating differences.We know that Ritournelle comes from music; it refers to the never ending, to a back and forth of the same theme, and to the idea of always returning to the beginning.In some ways, the concept of Ritournelle continues the formula of repetition imitate the invention.The act of repetition is comparable to the rapid reproduction of weed.” Conversation, A Script with Philippe Parreno by Adam Thirlwell
Published to coincide with the exhibition, Conversation is authored by British novelist Adam Thirlwell in collaboration with Philippe Parreno and designed by Studio Frith, London. The publication is an illustrated screenplay of a filmed conversation between Thirlwell and Parreno about the ‘non-human’; a catalogue of the ‘non-human’ elements that Thirlwell has come across in Parreno’s films and writing. The screenplay is interrupted by illustrations: stills from Parreno’s films, extracts from Parreno’s writing and excerpts from writing by authors that both Parreno and Thirwell admire.
Philippe Parreno is a French artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Paris. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Grenoble from 1983 until 1988 and at the Institut des Hautes Etudes en arts plastiques at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris from 1988 until 1989. Parreno rose to prominence in the 1990s, earning critical acclaim for his work that employs a diversity of media including film, sculpture, drawing and text.
Parreno has exhibited and published internationally. His work is included in the permanent collections of major international museums and institutions such as: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Kanazawa Museum of the 21st Century, Japan; Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; Musée du Luxembourg, Luxembourg; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; Tate Modern, London, UK; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; LACMA, Los Angeles, USA; MOMA, New York, USA; MUSAC, Léon, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan; The Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, USA and in Serralves Foundation – Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal.
Major exhibitions of Parreno’s work include: Philippe Parreno: Thenabouts, ACMI Melbourne (until 13 March 2017); Philippe Parreno: Anywhen, the 2016 Hyundai Commission for the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern (until 2 April 2017); Hypothesis, HangarBicocca, Milan (2015/2016); H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS, Park Avenue Armory, New York (2015); Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2014); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013/2014); The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow (2013); Barbican Art Gallery, London (2013); Fondation Beyeler (2012); Riehen/Basel (2012), Philadelphia Museum of Art (2012); The Serpentine Gallery, London (2010/2011); Witte de With (2010); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2009); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2009); Kunsthalle Zürich (2009); CCA Kitakyoshu, Japan (2006); Kunsthalle Zürich (2006); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2003); Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (2002), and Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2001). His work has also appeared in the Venice Biennale (1993, 1995, 2003, 2007, 2009 and 2015), Venice Biennale of Architecture (2014), Lyon Biennale (1997, 2003 and 2005) and Istanbul Biennial (2001). Exclusive Sponsor of the Museum and the Exhibition
PHILIPPE PARRENO: A TIME COLOURED SPACE
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