‘Infinite Sculpture’

The exhibition ‘Infinite Sculpture’ opens in December in Paris and will be on display at the Main Gallery of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon from April 2020.
19 nov 2019

The exhibition Infinite Sculpture: From the Antique Cast to the 3D Scan is a co-production by the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum and the Beaux-Arts de Paris, where it will first be presented between 4 December 2019 and 16 February 2020. In Lisbon, the exhibition takes place from 24 April to 7 September 2020.

If the exhibition in Paris is based on plasters from the Beaux-Arts de Paris and the Louvre, the Gulbenkian Museum features a selection from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon, aiming, on the one hand, to celebrate historical collections of plaster replicas of sculptures conserved in art schools and, on the other, to question the relevance of the mould/casting technique in contemporary artistic practices.

The exhibition presents these historical collections alongside a set of works by 18 national and international contemporary artists: David Bestué, Christine Borland, Maria José Burki, Steven Claydon, Michael Dean, Aleksandra Domanović, Asta Gröting, Simon Fujiwara, Oliver Laric, Juamana Manna, Jean-Luc Moulène, Charlotte Moth, Rogério Taveira, Francisco Tropa, Xavier Veilhan, Marion Verboom, Daphne Wright and Heimo Zobernig. Through dialogue and confrontation, a contemporary perspective is offered on the pedagogical function and contribution of these European plaster collections to visual culture and to concepts such as reproduction, variation, seriality, scale and matter.

This exhibition makes available to the public historical collections that have aroused growing interest among museums, researchers, universities and contemporary artists.

Plaster collections of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon, 2018. Photography: Carlos Azevedo
Plaster collections of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, 2018. Photography: Carlos Azevedo

Head curator: Penelope Curtis
Curatorial team: Penelope Curtis, Rita Fabiana, Thierry Leviez, Armelle Pradalier
Exhibition organised and co-produced by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Beaux-Arts de Paris, in collaboration with the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon.

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