The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum has recently acquired the work Bollocks 1 by artist Mariana Gomes to the Modern Collection. An intelligent piece, expressing freedom and humour, which was chosen to form part of a renewal of the works exhibited in the Painting section of the Modern Collection, updating this language and bringing with it a proposal for a dialogue that might be provocative, reminiscent or nostalgic.

This piece stands out among Mariana Gomes’ work (Faro, 1983), representing an interesting reflection on the context of contemporary painting. In the artist’s words, in the composition of this large panel of richly coloured and graphically complex fragments: “There is a repeated eulogy to error, like a trick which has gone wrong. This thing itself shows the structure of the hoax and its failure, like a painting which exposes its own faults, dismantling the method of painting and what is painted, as if turning against itself while laughing uncontrollably”.