Francisco Tropa – ⒶMO-TE
08 NOV 2024 - 11 MAY 2025
Museu de Serralves, OPorto
Fundação de Serralves is presenting the largest monographic exhibition of Francisco Tropa ever shown in a Portuguese institution. ⒶMO-TE will be on show from 8 November 2024 until 11 May 2025.
The author of a complex body of work that offers a surprisingly wide combination of media (sculpture, drawing, performance, engraving, photography, film) and references (including figures from the ancient and modern worlds, and from art, science and literature), Francisco Tropa (Lisbon, 1968) has built up a very distinctive universe over the last 30 years, in which a series of reflections fuelled by different traditions of sculpture, literature and mythology are evident. These reflections often centre on metaphysical questions and anthropological and philosophical themes, namely the nature, origin and purpose of art and the creative act.
The exhibition ⒶMO-TE, organised by the Serralves Museum, curated by Ricardo Nicolau, in collaboration with the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, and supported by the EDP Foundation, presents new aspects of Francisco Tropa's work. This year, the EDP Foundation presented Três Moscas [Three Flies] at the MAAT Gallery, a group exhibition by André Maranha, Francisco Tropa, Jorge Queiroz and Pedro Morais.
While the exhibition is not intended to be a retrospective, it is organised around the artist's projects carried out in each decade of his career. ⒶMO-TE, which will be shown in the Museum Galleries and on the Mezzanine of the Serralves Library, is organised around three main projects: the ‘prototypes’ mostly produced in the 1990s and early 2000s and seen as fundamental moments in his practice, presented on the mezzanine of the Serralves Library; The Assembly of Euclid, which kept him busy for much of the 2000s; and The RM Enigma, his most recent work.
About Francisco Tropa
Francisco Tropa studied at the António Arroio School in Lisbon from 1983 to 1986 and completed his studies at Ar.Co., where he has been a professor in the Sculpture Department since 1996. He was awarded a scholarship by the same institution at the Royal College of Arts in London (1992) and, between 1995-1996, received a scholarship from the Alfred Topfel Foundation at the Kunstakademie, Münster. Among the awards he has received are the Amstelveen Prize (1997) and the Caldas da Rainha Biennial Drawing Prize (1998).
Since the start of his career in the early 1990s, sculpture has been a central element in Francisco Tropa's work, attracting significant attention from institutions and critics. He represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale in 2011 and has taken part in internationally renowned events such as the Rennes Biennale (2012), the Istanbul Biennale (2011), Manifesta (2000), and the Melbourne and São Paulo biennales (both in 1999).
His work uses multiple media – sculpture, drawing, performance, photography and film – to explore fundamental themes in sculpture, including the body, death, nature, landscape, memory, origin and time.
