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2/11/2005

Joao Penalva

Ludwig Museum, Budapest

Retrospective exhibition

In cooperation with the Museum Serralves of Porto and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Dublin

Joäo Penalva was born in Portugal but lives in London. The retrospective exhibition of the artist is a selection that shows partly the ideas Penalva considers, partly applied methods and artistic strategies through videos, installations and photos.

Penalva began as a dance artist at the beginning of the 70's. In 1970-73 he studied ballet and the, Graham- and Cunningham-method at the Contemporary Dance Collage of London. Later he studied with the choreographer Jean Pomares and Pina Bausch. He began to deal with fine art in 1976 due to the influence of Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg and Beuys. At the beginning, he was solely interested in painting. However, later his paintings became necessary part of texts and stories.

The characteristic feature of Penalva's works is that the written and spoken texts are almost in abundance. He drives the audience through the visual and verbal traces as a kind of reader of traces. He makes the role of interpretation, the subjective approach and reception in the audience conscious.

The groups of the works shown at the exhibition create a context in which after some time the viewer questions reality. Listening to a story, we feel as if we were part of a novel instead of being in an exhibition ward. Thus, the question is weather the story is true or false. Reading a book, we do not ask the question who is Madame Bovary.

Penalva uses the different pictorial representations and visual references the way the viewer finally consciously realizes what 'watching' is and that it has a culturally determined and codified nature. 'If you believe that it is like Kurosava it is only because you hear the language of his films. But if I had put the voice of Swedish actors together with the same picture than you would believe that your cultural reference was a Bergman movie, you would believe that it is a Swedish movie.' Joäo Penalva

Opening: 3 november 2005

Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art
H-1095 Budapest, Komor Marcell u. 1.

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