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31/1/2006

Gabriela Albergaria & Leonor Antunes

Calouste Gulbenkian Cultural Centre, Paris

The premises of the Gulbenkian Cultural Centre at 51, Avenue d’Iena are historic. Originally built for the art collector Rodolphe Khan, they were bought in 1923 by Calouste Gulbenkian to accommodate a substantial part of his extensive collection. Comprising some 6.000 works ranging from Classical and Oriental Antiquity to modern times, the Collection includes manuscripts, books, tapestries, textiles of various sorts, French furniture, and European painting and sculpture; it features works by such masters as Houdon, Rodin, Rubens, Guardi, Turner, Hubert Robert, Corot, and Monet (now on display at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon). The building at 51, Avenue d’Ie'na has been transformed and adapted to serve this purpose. Even though Calouste Gulbenkian never actually lived in the building, it became so to speak the eminent collector’s personal museum.

Rita Fabiana has been invited to organise an exhibition of contemporary art to inaugurate a new course in the policy of the Paris centre. It will now place greater emphasis on creation by young artists and on cultural exchange between France and Portugal. Rita Fabiana has focused attention on the actual site. She invites not only the two artists whose work is on show - Gabriela Albergaria and Leonor Antunes - but also visitors to experience this unusual space in which floors, walls and light have all been specifically designed to enshrine one of the most fascinating art collections in Europe. In Espe'ces d’espaces, Perec remarks that “the body has to be pivoted to reveal completely what has been lying behind it..." Drawing inspiration from this, R. Fabiana shows that the site lends itself to the passage of time, which has invested it with the memories of its various uses and users. The newly created work of Gabriela Albergaria and Leonor Antunes - installations, actions, sculptures - has the dual aim of embracing at one and the same time both the space - an immense deactivated staging operation - and the art collection that is currently absent from it. The locus of memory thus becomes the site of a special experience opened up by this new occupation.

Gabriela Albergaria (Vale de Cambra 1965) and Leonor Antunes (Lisbon 1972) have been resident artists at the Cite' des Arts, Paris, and are now living in Berlin, after a sojourn at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien. Both are represented by Portuguese and Berlin galleries. Gabriela Albergaria has recently shown a dual project, << Movement, Instability, Conflict >> to the CAPC in Coimbra and to Gallery Marianne Grob in Berlin. Leonor Antunes took part in the exhibition “The Uncertainty Principle" at Public in 2005, curated by Marianne Lanave're.

Organised by Rita Fabiana for the
Calouste Gulbenkian Cultural Centre
51, Avenue d’Ie'na - 75016 - Paris
monday -friday, 9:00-17:30

51,Avenue d’Ie'na has been produced in collaboration with the Fine Arts department of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon.

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