Elective Affinities: Joan Miró and Contemporary Art from the Collection of the Museu Serralves

Rui Aguiar, Helena Almeida, Armando Alves, Giovanni Anselmo, Michael Biberstein, Wang Bing, Marcel Broodthaers, Pedro Calapez, Luisa Cunha, António Júlio Duarte, Josep Guinovart, Ana Hatherly, Jörg Immendorf, Asger Jorn, Anselm Kiefer, Jannis Kounellis, Barry Le Va, Julie Mehretu, Joan Miró, Robert Morris, Blinky Palermo, A.R. Penck, Graça Pereira Coutinho, Júlio Pomar, Dieter Roth, Agostinho Santos, Julião Sarmento, Thomas Schütte, António Sena, Nikias Skapinakis, Susana Solano, Ângelo de Sousa, Pedro Sousa Vieira, Antoni Tàpies

Elective Affinities: Joan Miró and Contemporary Art from the Collection of the Museu Serralves jimagines Miró’s relationship with contemporary art as a series of dynamic encounters. The exhibition title is derived from the field of chemistry, where it signifies the natural compatibility of certain compounds. The German philosopher Goethe later adapted this concept to emphasise human emotional bonds and affective relations among people, things or ideas that are instinctive and chosen rather than imposed. In its current application, the phrase ‘elective affinities’ denotes unanticipated visual and conceptual dialogues across time and space, meeting points where intuition replaces formal influence. The exhibition takes as its starting point Miró’s work of the 1960s and 1970s, with occasional excursions into his earlier practices.

Paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures and woven works by Miró share space with objects by German, Greek, American, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian, Chinese, Italian, Swiss, Catalan and Danish contemporary artists, whose practices range from painting and sculpture to collage, installation, photography, video and multimedia works; from Process Art to Arte Povera; and from visual interventions into established codes for painting to Neo-Expressionism and the interrogation of language. At each juncture, Miró’s work speaks to contemporary artistic practices.

Following a preamble, the exhibition is divided into nine sections, each of which proposes a thematic lens through which to view the works: 1. Process Art; 2. Landscape, Memory and Matter; 3. Painting en abîme; 4. Anti-Monuments; 5. Language; 6. Expressionism Re-Imagined; 7. Drawing as Practice; 8. Collage and Modern Life; and 9. Place/No Place.

The exhibition is organised by the Serralves Foundation—Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Robert Lubar Messeri, coordenated by Isabel Braga, and displays works from the Miró Collection of the Portuguese State, given to the Municipality of Porto and deposited at the Serralves Foundation, and from the Serralves Collection.