In his first solo exhibition in Portugal, Peter Friedl presents objects derived from a Portuguese street theatre format commonly known as Teatro Dom Roberto. Its stage (barraca) is a minimalist DIY construction covered with cloth. The construction conceals puppeteers from the public gaze, as they direct the violent and noisy actions of the puppets. The traditional Dom Roberto theatre is a minor art, based on typecasting, repetition and quite a restricted repertoire such as 'O Barbeiro Diabólico 'or 'A Tourada'.
For his exhibition at Lumiar Cité, Peter Friedl has created his own theatre world, which is both idiosyncratic and plausible. It is an essentially Lusophone universe taking the form of colourful barracas and puppets, fraught with historical references to several centuries and continents.
Peter Friedl’s multilayered playing with contextual transfers, precise quotations and permanent displacement – a sort of shadow fighting with realism and mimesis – follows an aesthetics of...critical intimacy. In the exhibition, as a medium, the figurines, made with the help of a local puppeteer, suggest a myriad of narratives that go far beyond the “traditional” repertoire of the Dom Roberto theatre. This theatre may start to perform at any moment, but it remains silent and still, as if the Fall of individualisation and historiographic fixation had cast a spell on its heroes and heroines. The action and plot are omitted. While in the traditional genre of popular theatre the dramatis personæ used to seek refuge from the excesses of history, Friedl explores how history works. Does the real have to be transformed into poetry in order to be imagined? The artist is fully aware that both the historian and the poet face the same incompatibility of historical reality and its linguistic articulation. The quest for alternative models of narration is aimed at a wide-ranging mobility of notions and concepts – across time and space.
Peter Friedl (Austria, 1960) lives in Berlin. His work has been exhibited worldwide, including at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), Hamburger Kunsthalle. He has participated in the Taipei Biennial (2016, 2012), Venice Biennale (2015, 1999), São Paulo Architecture Biennial (2013), La Triennale (Paris, 2012), São Paulo Biennial (2008), Gwangju Biennale (2008), Manifesta 7 (Trentino, 2008), documenta XII (Kassel, 2007), documenta X (Kassel, 1997), and Berlin Biennale (2004). Recent solo exhibitions: “The Diaries”, Grazer Kunstverein (Graz, 2016); “The Dramatist”, Artspace (Auckland, 2014); “Dummy”, Museum of Contemporary Art (Siegen, 2014); “King Kong”, Le Lieu unique (Nantes, 2013); “Peter Friedl”, Sala Rekalde (Bilbao, 2010); “Working”, Kunsthalle Basel (2008); “Blow Job”, Extra City Kunsthal (Antwerp, 2008); and “Work 1964–2006”, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) / Miami Art Central / Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille (2006–07).
Entrada actualizada el el 19 sep de 2017
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