CRITERIA: ARCO- IFEMA FOUNDATION COLLECTION AT LISBON
From January 30 to April 21st, Galeria do Torreão Nascente de la Cordoaria, in Lisbon, presents Criteria. Under the curatorship of the curator and Portuguese art teacher Miguel von Hafe Pérez, the exhibition will be made thanks to the collection of works from the ARCO / IFEMA Foundation Collection.
Thirty-seven are the works and thirty-three the artists staring Criteria. Although the imprint of Portuguese artists is very strong -Ana Jotta, Carlos Bunga, Filipa César, Francisco Tropa, Gil Heitor Cortesão, Helena Almeida and Jorge Molder, among others-, the selection of artworks also invites artists from the international scene as Babi Badalov, Francesc Ruiz, Thomas Ruff or Wolfgang Tillmans. What all the pieces that make up the exhibition have in common is the fact that all of them were acquired throughout the different editions of ARCO.
Criteria emerges as another element of the program of exhibitions of private collections that began with the collection of the Serralves Foundation and the Fundación La Caixa collection. For this reason, Fundación ARCO invited the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa - the gallery's space manager - to take part in this exhibition. In addition, in a statement made by the foundation they expplained this gesture "will serve to strengthen the ties of ARCO and IFEMA with Portugal, as well as to continue promoting the work of the ARCO Foundation in the promotion of collecting and appreciation of contemporary art, especially the Portuguese scene. "
About the ARCO Foundation Collection
Created and promoted by IFEMA since 1987, the collection gathers works acquired in each edition of ARCO. At present, the Collection has more than 300 pieces and works as an active part of the programming of the Art Center dos de Mayo de Móstoles (CA2M) where it is part of different thematic exhibitions.
Regarding the foundation, Miguel von Hafe declared: "At its birth, the Collection assumes a pedagogical character with the desire to become an example for the constitution of an international collection of relevance in a context in which there were still practically nonexistent institutional structures that could assume that role in Spain ". Hence also the need to have the advice of professionals in the art world for the selection of works, "thus ensuring independence and an external view based precisely on professionally established and justifiable criteria."
