From March 19 onwards, MAAT will host Fiction and Fabrication: Photography of Architecture after the Digital Turn, which gathers nearly 50 artists who build and manipulate images of architectural objects and spaces.
Image: Isabel Brison, Maravilhas de Portugal #3, 2008. Cortesia Galeria Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporanea
From March 19 onwards, MAAT will host Fiction and Fabrication: Photography of Architecture after the Digital Turn, which gathers nearly 50 artists who build and manipulate images of architectural objects and spaces.
Signaling 30 years since Photoshop was invented and digital tools invaded photographic production, this exhibition focuses on the imagery of architecture as a central theme to an expanded practice of photography in contemporary art. From the seminal works of Andreas Gurski, Thomas Demand or Doug Aitken, to the fictional creations of Beate Gütschow, Oliver Boberg or Isabel Brison, the show offers a panorama of architectural photography that evades objective approaches and favours fictionalised takes on reality between cinematic gazes, image deconstruction and more politicised narratives.
Isabel Brison, Maravilhas de Portugal #3, 2008. Cortesia Galeria Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporanea
Curated by Pedro Gadanho and Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues, the exhibition is divided into three sections: the first, Expanded Field, features works that, starting from representations of the built environment, expand the traditional boundaries of the medium of photography. Large formats, sculptural interventions, collages, installations and projections are used to establish a dialogue between the representation of architectural objects, urban settings and other fields of action typical of contemporary artistic practices. The second section,Social Narratives, focuses on the tendency of some contemporary photographic practices to engage the potential of fiction to offer a reading of different individual and collective realities – both through personal and intimate compositions and by addressing issues of a political and social nature. The final section, Digital Reconstructions brings together works that reveal the current potential to engender worlds and scenarios divorced from any real context. In contrast with abundant flawless renderings and digitally retouched images in the realm of architectural communication, the artists and photographers presented here offer fictional depictions that interrogate the truth of the contemporary built environment.
At a time when digital tools preside over the making of architectural images for media consumption, fictions stemming from the art world appear here as a critical alternative that questions and expands the concept of architecture. Drawing from different sources and collections, including the EDP Foundation Art Collection, and substantial loans from the exhibition’s partner Novo Banco Contemporary Photography Collection, the nearly seventy artworks shown here constitute one of the most extensive panoramas of architecture-related photography today.
Participating Artists:
Doug Aitken, Olivier Boberg, Teresa Braula Reis, Isabel Brison, James Casabere, André Cepeda, David Claerbout, Celine Condorelli, Gregory Crewdson, Hans Op de Beeck, Mónica de Miranda, Thomas Demand, Filip Dujardin, Roland Fischer, Carlos Garaicoa, Dionisio Gonzalez, Nicolas Grospierre, Andreas Gursky, Beate Gütschow, Patrick Hamilton, Sabine Hornig, Veronika Kellndorfer, Lucia Koch, Aglaia Konrad, Jonathan Lewis, Inês Lombardi, Tatiana Macedo, Mafalda Marques Correia, Edgar Martins, Antoni Muntadas, Anja Niemi, Rodrigo Oliveira, Bas Princen, Olivier Ratsi, , Nick Relph, Martha Rosler, Thomas Ruff, Philip Schaerer, Evandro Soares, Rita Sobral Campos, Hanna Starkey, Gerold Tagwerker, Wolfgang Tillmans, Pedro Tudela, Jeff Wall, James Welling.
Curated by Pedro Gadanho and Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues
March 19 – August 19, 2019
Main Gallery + Video Room [MAAT]
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
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