Beauty Codes (order/disorder/chaos): Act II at Kunsthalle Lissabon

Artists: Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Haris Epaminonda, Luca Francesconi, Jacopo Miliani, André Romão and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané

Exhibition title: Beauty Codes (order/disorder/chaos): Act II

Conceived and curated by: CURA, Fondazione Giuliani and Kunsthalle Lissabon

Venue: Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, Portugal

Date: July 27 – September 26, 2015

Photography: Bruno Lopes, images courtesy of the artists and Kunsthalle Lissabon

At the origin of modern thought there is a contrast between order and disorder, “contrasting impulses and tendencies, the modular combination of which produces in every epoch the work of art.” Taking Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy as a point of reference, the exhibition Beauty Codes (order/disorder/chaos), is a collaborative project between three international art spaces, CURA., Fondazione Giuliani and #kunsthallelissabon, which unfolds over a six-month period, in three consecutive legs. Loosely constructed around the narrative codes of Greek Tragedy, the exhibition begins with a single voice, then shifts – through the work of twelve international artists – to a gradual process of layering and accumulation, which disrupts the original order with multiple viewpoints, fractured boundaries and subverted roles, finally transitioning to a subsequent subtraction with a new set of objects and traces of previous actions. The complete exhibition cycle is a trajectory from a state of order and harmony, to disorder and chaos, leading to the formation of a new order and quietude.

The project’s Prologue took place in CURA. with the installation Why Should Our Bodies End At The Skin? (2012) by Lili Reynaud-Dewar, a work which serves as the link between the three parts of a play performed on three separate stages, and which was present in a different form in Act I, the group exhibition at Fondazione Giuliani, which also included works by Pedro Barateiro, Pablo Bronstein, Haris Epaminonda, Fischli/Weiss, Jacopo Miliani, Amalia Pica, Alexandre Singh and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané.

Besides Lili Reynaud-Dewar, #kunsthallelissabon’s Act II of Beauty Codes will feature works by Haris Epaminonda, Luca Francesconi, Jacopo Miliani, André Romão and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané.

Beauty Codes (order/disorder/chaos) is a collaboration between CURA., Fondazione Giuliani and #kunsthallelissabon.

#kunsthallelissabon is generously supported by Secretaria de Estado da Cultura/Direção Geral das Artes (DGArtes), Teixeira de Freitas, Rodrigues e Associados and by EDP Foundation.