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

Rui Aguiar, Helena Almeida, Armando Alves, Michael Biberstein, Marcel Broodthaers, Luisa Cunha, Ana Hatherly, Asger Jorn, Jannis Kounellis, Barry Le Va, Julie Mehretu, Joan Miró, Robert Morris, Blinky Palermo, A. R. Penck, Júlio Pomar, Dieter Roth, Agostinho Santos, Julião Sarmento, António Sena, Susana Solano, 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.

The exhibition is divided into seven sections, each proposing a thematic lens through which to view the works: 1. Process Art; 2. Expressionism Reimagined; 3. Anti-Monuments; 4. Drawing as Practice; 5. Collage and Modern Life; 6. Language; and 7. Painting en abîme.

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.