Exhibition Opening: 25 October at 5 pm

The enthusiasm and creative drive of João Paulo Feliciano (Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, 1963) are not restricted by disciplinary boundaries, extending well beyond the universe of visual arts and music, and underpinning a multifaceted and idiosyncratic career that has marked the Portuguese cultural scene since the mid-1980s.

While his works from the early 1990s revolved around sculpture and installation, rock music and urban culture, the following decade brought a growing interest in exploring the phenomena of perception, the artistic and sensory potential of light and colour, and the dematerialisation of the object, underlining a clear shift in his relationship with technology. In recent years, his artistic activity has been particularly intense, coinciding with his return to Caldas da Rainha. During this time, Feliciano has resumed the practice of painting, drawing, collage and assemblage, working simultaneously with different media and on various scales. He continues to constantly examine the material and linguistic supports he uses as a way of rethinking our relationship with the world, questioning the assumptions of traditional artistic genres in light of different aspects of popular culture. João Paulo Feliciano’s provocative and ironic stance, his desire to involve the viewer in the meaning of the work and, above all, his insatiable appetite for experimentation are evident throughout his diverse body of work.

Bringing together large and small-scale installations, collages and assemblages, Subir ao palco / Back home presents a group of works from the Serralves Collection and the artist’s collection that reveal some of the crossovers, shifts and recurrences in his artistic path over the last decades, particularly in the field of music and the poetics of the object. For João Paulo Feliciano—a born communicator, with a background in linguistics and extensive experience in the graphic arts—, the titles of his works constitute ‘linguistic extensions’ to each piece. The title of this exhibition follows the same principle: unusual and evocative, it refers to two specific works and to distinct subjects; it articulates different languages (both recurring in his work) and offers various possibilities of interpretation, mirroring the multiplicity of the artist’s practice.

This exhibition, curated by Joana Valsassina, is part of the Serralves Collection Touring Exhibition Programme, which aims to make the Foundation’s collection accessible to different audiences across the country.

Production: Fundação de Serralves — Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto