PRESSKIT

#Almeida

1, PLACE DE LA CONCORDE · PARIS 8E · M° CONCORDE WWW.JEUDEPAUME.ORG

HELENA ALMEIDACORPUSFebruary 9th — May 22nd 2016

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An exhibition organized by Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, in collaboration

with Jeu de Paume and WIELS, Centre d’art contemporain, Bruxelles.

PATRONSNeuflize Vie is the main sponsor for the exhibition « Corpus ».

MEDIA PARTNERSA NOUS PARIS, Arte, Marie Claire, Stylist, Time Out Paris

Our thanks to hôtel Chavanel.

TOURING WIELS, Centre d’art contemporain, Brussels, september 10th – december 11th 2016

The Jeu de Paume receives public funding from the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communicationand its main corporate sponsors are Neuflize Vie and Manufacture Jaeger-LeCoultre.

• Cover : Helena Almeida, Pintura habitada [Inhabited painting], 1975Acrylic on photograph, 46 × 50 cm. Coll. Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, PortoPhoto Filipe Braga © Fundação de Serralves, Porto

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HELENA ALMEIDACORPUSFebruary 9th — May 22nd 2016

CONTENTS 4 — THE EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

6 — THE EXHIBITION

9 — HELENA ALMEIDA

10 — SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 11 — THE JEU DE PAUME BOOKSHOP 12 — PRESS VISUALS

16 — PRACTICAL INFO

CURATORSJoão Ribas and Marta Moreira de Almeida, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto

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EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

• Helena Almeida (b. 1934, Lisbon) is considered to be one of the greatest contemporary Portuguese artists. Her long career has allowed her to gain a reputation from the 1970s onward as one of the leading figures of conceptual art. Countless exhibitions have been devoted to her work all over the world. The artist represented Portugal at the Venice Biennales of 1982 and 2005.

• The exhibition Corpus is the first French retrospective devoted to the different phases of Helena Almeida’s career, from her early works from the mid-1960s—where the deconstruction of the canvas was already in evidence through the use of photography—to her more recent creations.

• Helena Almeida’s work heralds the end of a single medium through her combined use of painting and photography, but also drawing and video, thereby creating a veritable porousness between all artistic media. Her experimental work may be situated within the context of the Modernist crisis in Europe in the late-1960s. Her works question the place of the image at a time when the means of reproduction and diffusion were rapidly increasing.

• Almeida’s most recent works demonstrate a different appreciation of her body. Her mise en scène, akin to choreography, in front of the lens of her husband, Artur Rosa, may only be understood in the artist’s own words, as a performance. Her photographs capture an instant, a fixed moment in time, where her body appears and disappears from the plane of the image. Her body is both the subject and the medium of her artwork.

• Helena Almeida’s work follows on from certain projects previously programmed at the Jeu de Paume, reflecting the institution’s desire to present new narrative forms around the body and the gesture, as evident in the exhibitions of works by Cindy Sherman (2006), Claude Cahun (2011), Lorna Simpson (2013), Valérie Jouve (2015), and through film cycles devoted to Barbara Hammer (2012) and Yvonne Rainer (2014).

• After her combined exploration of drawing, painting and photography, Helena Almeida turned her attention to the image, particularly her own image. Photography provides the artist with a way of embodying her drawings and paintings.

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• Helena Almeida, Seduzir [Seduce], 2002black and white photographs (2 elements), 187 × 125 cm (each). Coll. Helga de Alvear, Madrid/Cáceres Photo Laura Castro Caldas and Paulo Cintra, courtesy Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid/Cáceres

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THE EXHIBITION

Following her early three-dimensional works, the artist found in photography a means of overcoming the exteriority of painting, and of allowing “being” and “doing” to coexist in the same medium, “as if I were continuing to affirm: my painting is my body, my work is my body”. Beyond the poetic and metaphorical readings that this work can inspire, it can be seen as an attempt at attaining the limits of a medium, whether photography, performance or sculpture.

The body in Almeida’s work becomes both a sculptural form and a space, object and subject, signifier and signified. The artist’s work is a summary, an act that has been carefully staged, and one that is highly poetic. The representations of these actions also show the context in which Almeida positioned herself. Facing the camera, she refuses that her pictures become self-portraits. She represents primarily her body, but it is a universal body.

Dressed in black, Helena Almeida incorporates elements from her studio into her pictures. She takes position in poses that she has carefully choreographed, in order to create complex compositions, which are often organized in series. In 1969, for the first time, Helena Almeida was photographed by her husband, the architect Artur Rosa. The latter would frequently collaborate with her, as the photographer of his wife’s performances, a highly mediatized form of self-representation, which would become a characteristic of her work.

The exhibition Corpus presents an ensemble of works—painting, photography, video and drawing—produced by the artist from the 1960s to the present day. In these works, the body registers, occupies and defines the space and plays a central role. The exhibition has a retrospective dimension, spanning the different phases of the artist’s career, from her earliest pieces dating from the mid-1960s up until her more recent work.

• Helena Almeida, Seduzir [Seduce], 2001black and white photographs (4 elements), 105 × 72 cm (each). Coll. Helga de Alvear, Madrid/CáceresPhoto Filipe Braga © Fundação de Serralves, Porto

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Unlike other contemporary artists who use the self-portrait and self-representation to stage characters through elaborate sets and poses—Cindy Sherman, for example—here the starting point is always the artist’s body. Through photography, Helena Almeida creates a strong relationship between representation (the act of painting or drawing) and presentation (of her own body as a “medium” of that act). “The real physical body of the artist is constantly lost, defaced or obscured behind streaks of paint which sometimes extend it, sometimes cover it, enter or exit (towards or away from) the interior of this body.”

Her more recent works can be characterized by the relationship between the artist’s body and space (no longer with drawing or painting), and makes use of photography (recurrent in works composed of series) in order to retrace a performance of the artist within the private space of her studio. Nevertheless, the same question continues to underlie Helena Almeida’s work: how can the body and the movement of the body (always that of the artist) succeed in creating a work of art? The intransigence with which Helena Almeida explores this subject makes her oeuvre, according to Isabel Carlos, “one of the most radically consistent of Portuguese art from the second half of the twentieth century.”

“I became the painting, I became my work, I became the thing created. And, at the same time, I’m the creator. And I can’t say why.”

Helena Almeida, An Unfinished Conversation, de Marta Moreira Almeida et João Ribas.

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• Helena Almeida, Sem título [Untitled], 2010black and white photograph, 125 × 135 cm. Coll. Laurent FiévetPhoto Courtesy Galerie Filomena Soares, Lisbonne

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HELENA ALMEIDA

Helena Almeida is a Portuguese artist known for her photographic work, in addition to her performances, paintings and drawings.

Born in 1934 in Lisbon, where she still lives and works today, Helena Almeida studied painting at the Fine Arts Department of the University of Lisbon in 1955. She regularly exhibited her work from the late-1960s onward. Her father, the sculptor Leopoldo de Almeida, encouraged her to participate in his studio sessions. Following her marriage to architect Artur Rosa, Helena Almeida received a scholarship and moved to Paris.

Her first exhibition took place in 1967. Her earliest three-dimensional work reveals her diverse range of influences and undermined traditional concepts of painting.

From 1969 onward, Helena Almeida began to work on the notion of self-representation. According to Almeida, there are no limits between the work and the body of the artist. However, her works are not self-portraits, but instead vacillate between performance, capturing a fixed moment in time, and body art, where her body is the subject of the work.

In the early-1970s, Helena Almeida returned to drawing and three-dimensional works, with the use of horsehair, in order to create the impression of movement within the work.

From 1975 onward, she combined three disciplines; photography, painting and drawing, using either horsehair or blue and red paint, or black pigment on her photographs.

Exhibitions of her work have been held in various venues and locations throughout the world: Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge (2009), Fundación Telefónica in Madrid (2008), The Drawing Center in New York (2004), Biennale of Sydney (2004) and the Galician Contemporary Art Centre (CGAC) in Santiago de Compostela (2000). Such visibility on an international scale has contributed to the artist’s renown outside of her native Portugal. Almeida now holds an eminent place on the international art scene. She represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale in both 1982 and 2005.

Helena Almeida. Courtesy de l’artiste.

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1967 – 1968Galeria Buchholz, Lisbon

1972Galeria Modulo, PortoSociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes, Lisbon

197314 pinturas de Helena Almeida, Galeria Mamede, Lisbon

1976Desenhos habitados, Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes, LisbonModulo — Centro Difusor de Arte, Porto

1978Bewohnte Zeichnungen, Galerie Erika + Otto Friedrich, BerneGalerie Bama, ParisModulo — Centro Difusor de Arte, Lisbon

1979Galerie Horenbeeck, BrusselsCooperativa Diferença, Lisbon

1982Venice Biennal, Portuguese Pavillon, Venice

1983Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon

1984Galerie Dieter Tausch, InnsbruckCooperativa Diferença, Lisbon

1985Helena Almeida, Artur Rosa : Instalação, fotografias, desenhos, escultura, Galeria EMI — Valentim de Carvalho, Lisbon

1987Helena Almeida: Frisos, Centro de Arte Moderna, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon

1989Richard Demarco Gallery, Edimbourg

1995Dramatis persona: Varia es e fuga sobre um corpo, Casa de Serralves, Porto

1996Exposio de desenho, Galeria EMI — Valentim de Carvalho, Lisbon

1999Centro de Arte das Caldas da Rainha, Caldas da Rainha

2001A experiencia do lugar, PortoThomas Erben Gallery, New YorkGaleria Filomena Soares, Lisbon

2004Inhabited Drawings, Drawing Center, New York

2005Trabalhos recentes, Centre d’art Santa Monica, BarcelonaIntus, 51 Venice Biennal, Portuguese Pavillon, Venice

2006Intus, Centro de Arte Moderna, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, LisbonCaderno de campo, Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon

2008Tela rosa para vestir, Fundacion Telefonica, Madrid

2009Cuaderno de campo, Museo Extremeo e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporaneo, BadajozHelena Almeida: Inside Me, Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom)

2010Helena Almeida: Inside Me, John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton (United Kingdom)Banada en lagrimas, Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid

2011Travaux récents, Galerie les Filles du Calvaire, ParisHelena Almeida, Frieze Art Fair, London (Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid)

2013Helena Almeida, Galerie Vilaseco-Hauser, La CorogneHelena Almeida: Transubstanciação, Fundação Leal Rios, LisbonAndar e abraar, Espaço BES Arte & Finança, Lisbon“Helena Almeida”, Espaivisor — Galerie Visor, Valence

2014Desenho [Dessin], Galerie Filomena Soares, Lisbon

2015Setting (avec Mirosław Bałka), Viana Art, New YorkA minha obra é o meu corpo, o meu corpo é a minha obra, Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto

2016 Helena Almeida. Corpus, Jeu de Paume, Paris

• SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

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• JEU DE PAUME BOOKSHOP

Catalogue

An exhibition catalogue is published in coedition by Jeu de Paume / Fundação de Serralves / WIELS 240 pages, approx. 200 illustrations.Available in French, English and Portuguese

Texts by Bernardo Pinto de Almeida, Cornelia H. Butler, Peggy Phelan, interview of the artist with João Ribas and Marta Moreira de Almeida.

€39

Jeu de Paume bookshop 1, place de la Concorde, Paris 8e Tuesday (late-night opening) : 11 h-21 h Wednesday to Sunday : 11 h-19 h / Closed on Monday t. 01 47 03 12 36 / librairie@jeudepaume.org / www.librairiejeudepaume.org

• Additionnal readings

Lorna Simpson (2013)Texts by Naomi Beckwith, Marta Gili, Thomas J. Lax, Joan Simon et Elvan Zabunyan.Coed. Jeu de Paume et FEP, DelMonico Books-Prestel Publishing.49,95 €

Cindy Sherman (2006)Texts by Jean-Pierre Criqui, Régis Durand and Laura MulveyCoed. Jeu de Paume, Flammarion 50 €

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PRESS VISUALS

1 • Helena Almeida, Pintura habitada [Inhabited painting], 1975Acrylic on photograph, 46 × 50 cm, Coll. Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, PortoPhoto Filipe Braga © Fundação de Serralves, Porto

2 • Helena Almeida, Sem título [Untitled], 2010black-and-white photograph, 125 × 135 cm, Coll. Laurent FiévetPhoto Courtesy Galerie Filomena Soares, Lisbon

The copyright-free reproduction and display of the following selection of images is permitted solely as part of the promotion of this exhibition at the Jeu de Paume and only while the exhibition is in progress.

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3 • Helena Almeida, Sem título [Untitled], 1968Acrylic on canvas and wood, 130 × 97 cm, Coll. Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, PortoPhoto Filipe Braga © Fundação de Serralves, Porto

5 • Helena Almeida, Saída negra [Black Exit], 1995black and white photographs (5 elements), 71 × 48 cm (each), Coll. Norlinda and José Lima, long-term loan to Núcleo de Arte da Oliva Creative Factory, S. João da Madeira, Photo Aníbal Lemos, courtesy Núcleo de Arte da Oliva Creative Factory, S. João da Madeira

4 • Helena Almeida, Desenho habitado [Inhabited drawing], 1975black and white photograph, Indian ink, horse hair, 60 × 55 cmColl. Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea – Museu do Chiado, Lis-bon, Photo Mário Valente, courtesy MNAC – Museu do Chiado, Lisbon

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6 • Helena Almeida, Seduzir [Seduce], 2002black and white photographs (2 elements), 187 × 125 cm (each), Coll. Helga de Alvear, Madrid/Cáceres Photo Laura Castro Caldas and Paulo Cintra, courtesy Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid/Cáceres

7 • Helena Almeida, Estudos para a série “Seduzir” [Study for the series “Seduce”], 2002, paint and pastel on paper, (29 elements), 30 x 21 cm (each)Col. Helga de Alvear, Madrid/Cáceres

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8 • Helena Almeida, Tela habitada [Inhabited canvas], 1976, black and white photograph, 205 × 128 cmedition of 3 Coll. Galeria Filomena Soares, LisbonPhoto Filipe Braga © Fundação de Serralves, Porto

9 • Helena Almeida, Seduzir [Seduce], 2001black and white photographs (4 elements), 105 × 72 cm (each), Coll. Helga de Alvear, Madrid/CáceresPhoto Filipe Braga © Fundação de Serralves, Porto

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10 • Helena Almeida, Dentro de mim [Inside me], 1998, black and white photograph, 185 × 122 cm, Coll. Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento, long-term loan Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto, Photo : Laura Castro Caldas et Paulo Cintra, courtesy FLAD, Lisbon

11 • Helena Almeida, Seduzir [Seduce], 2002black and white photograph and acrylic, 199 × 129,5 cmColl. CAM – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, LisbonPhoto José Manuel Costa Alves, courtesy CAM – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbonne

12 • Helena Almeida, Pintura habitada [Inhabited painting],1976, black and white photograph, acrylic, 40 x 30 cm,Coll. Fernando d’Almeida

1, PLACE DE LA CONCORDE · PARIS 8E · M° CONCORDE WWW.JEUDEPAUME.ORG

OPENING TIMES Tuesday (late-night opening): 11 am – 9 pm

Wednesday to Sunday: 11 am – 7 pmClosed Monday

ADMISSIONExhibition : 10 € / Concession : 7.50 €

VISUALS FOR PRESSCopyright-free press visuals can be downloaded from www.jeudepaume.org

login: presskit I password: photos

CONTACTSPress : Annabelle Floriant

t. 01 47 03 13 22 / 06 42 53 04 07 / annabellefloriant@jeudepaume.orgCommunication : Anne Racine

PRACTICAL INFO

#Almeida

1, PLACE DE LA CONCORDE · PARIS 8E · M° CONCORDE WWW.JEUDEPAUME.ORG