We are pleased to present Julião Sarmento's fourth exhibition at Galeria Joan Prats, titled Objects on the New Landscape Demanding of the Eye (part 3), in which we will show his recent work, with installation, sculpture and painting.
The title of the exhibition recalls that of the first exhibition held at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1957, which included paintings by various artists and in which the installation and assemblage pioneer, Edward Kienholz, participated.
In the exhibition, the installation Crash Dummy, 2016, and the sculpture Broken Alice, 2014, coexist with a series of paintings that show triangular shapes, delicately drawn, based on the fundamental principles of fractal geometry, and other works inspired by the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen of Degas. This diversity of supports and techniques present in the exhibition is characteristic of the artistic practice of Julião Sarmento and, on this occasion, stands out for the combination of materials that could be defined as poor with materials subject to advanced technological processes.

Julião Sarmento produces a work that adopts multiple forms with drawings, paintings, sculptures, performances and videos that speak of the artifices of seduction and the mechanisms of desire. From its beginnings, in the middle of the seventies, the work of Julião Sarmento has been characterized by its archival character. Thus, in his works, they can appear feminine silhouettes, architectural plans, literary fragments and objects.
Often, these coded iconographies explicitly present us with the signs needed to identify to the source of his imagery and its meanings. This constant oscillation between appearance and reality, fiction and documentation, invention and fact with which Sarmento confronts us is not at all a gratuitous game. The assemblages fashioned by the artist play on this dialectic of superficial interpretation, where many elements are perfectly identifiable, even banal or anodyne, and deeper interpretation that drives us to seek correspondences, links and relations without realizing that the very fact of carrying out this search is itself the meaning we are supposed to discover.
Julião Sarmento (Lisboa, 1948) lives and works in Estoril, Portugal. He has shown internationally since 1979. In recent years the following individual exhibitions stand out:: The real thing at Gulbenkian París, 2016; Guest or Host at CAAM Gran Canaria, 2015; Lo Sguardo Selettivo at GAM Turin, 2014; Index at MACE Porto, 2013; White Nights (A Retrospective) at Serralves - Museu de Arte Contemporânea Porto, 2012; Monograph Room at Tate Modern London 2010; Grace Under Pressure at Estação Pinacoteca São Paulo, 2009; Literal at Centro José Guerrero Granada, 2008; and Julião Sarmento at Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens Deurle, 2005. He has been present in two Documenta (1982, 1987) and three Venice Biennials (1980, 2001 and 1997 representing Portugal). His work is part of public and private collections around the world, among which: The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Tate Modern, London.