An Oasis at Sunset, MAAT

The exhibition architecture for Um oásis ao entardecer [An oasis at sunset], at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (maat) in Lisbon, is set within an ambitious spatial intervention designed by Diogo Passarinho Studio, that tries to provoke and react to the existing spatial framework by creating a series of backdrops which reconfigure circulations and viewing experiences.

Using spatial subjectivity and time as the design’s main driver, the visitors are presented with a scattered layout, allowing a fictitious sense of freedom and control — different spaces shift from more recognisable geometries to undefined or unfinished structures.

Through surgical placements, we have recreated a new set of intimacies and spatial relationships within an already quasi-linear experience in the building. This has allowed us to formulate a sequential but abrupt series of viewing points, where all rooms have different scales and levels of intimacy and all the usual exhibition gimmicks, such as light and sounds locks have been eliminated, making the passageways between spaces and works feel like a smooth, sequential experience.

Collaborations between artists, have been brilliantly orchestrated by Inês Grosso and Rosa Lleó (the show’s curators), and brought to this project an intense-thinking process and an emotionally-charged narrative. Bouncing from these collaborations, the design functions as a navigational framework where visitors occasionally have full spatial perception or are physically challenged to act, discover, trespass, or only peek through. 

This whatchful, sensorial design allowed for the creation of specific settings for each artwork — through the viewer’s lens they can be spatially perceived in different ways or discovered in new formats. Presented in a non-chronological order, a celebration of twenty years and twenty artists can now be rediscovered through a ruin which only appears to us at sunset. 

2020

MAAT, Lisbon, PT

Curated by Inês Grosso and Rosa Lleó

Artworks by: Álvaro Lapa, Ana Jotta, Ana Santos, André Romão, Artur Barrio, Carlos Bunga, Claire de Santa Coloma, Diana Policarpo, Eduardo Batarda, Gabriel Abrantes, Joana Vasconcelos, João Leonardo, João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Jorge Molder, Leonor Antunes, Lourdes Castro, Mariana Silva, Mário Cesariny, Priscila Fernandes, Vasco Araújo.

Exhibition Architecture by Diogo Passarinho Studio
Team: Diogo Passarinho, Finia Köhler and Andrea Belosi 

Photography Bruno Lopes

Graphic design: ATLAS Projectos

Exhibition dates:: 29/10/20 - 18/02/2021