Useful Information
SCULPTURE. TRANSMUTATION
EDP Foundation Art Collection
Dates: 9 June to 5 September 2026
Venue: Galeria do Parque Town Hall (Paços do Concelho) of Vila Nova da Barquinha
Time: Tuesday to Saturday Summer (March to September): 14:00 to 19:00
Closed on Sundays and Mondays
Free admission
From 9 June to 05 September 2026, Galeria do Parque in Vila Nova da Barquinha will host the exhibition ‘SCULPTURE. TRANSMUTATION’, featuring works from the EDP Foundation Art Collection and curated by Margarida Almeida Chantre, who oversees the EDP Foundation’s Portuguese art collection.
The exhibition will officially open on 9 June at 5.00 pm at Galeria do Parque. Admission is free.
This is the third and final exhibition held under the collaboration agreement established in 2024 between the EDP Foundation and the Municipality of Vila Nova da Barquinha, which has enabled three thematic exhibitions from the prestigious EDP Foundation Art Collection to be shown at the Galeria do Parque. After ‘PAINTING. PROVOCATION’ (2024) and ‘DRAWING. REVELATION’ (2025), it is now time for sculpture to take centre stage in this new exhibition.
Launched in 2000, the EDP Foundation Art Collection currently comprises over 2,545 works by more than 345 artists, constituting one of the most significant private collections of contemporary Portuguese art. The collection spans several generations of artists, from the 1960s to the present day, and encompasses various media.
Under the concept of ‘transmutation’, the exhibition invites the viewers to reflect on contemporary sculpture as an artistic practice in constant transformation. The idea of change – of matter, form, state or meaning – serves as the central theme of a selection of works that challenge the traditional view of sculpture as a fixed and permanent object.
The show brings together works by Maria José Oliveira, João Vieira, Vhils, Vasco Costa, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Manuel Baptista, João Ferro Martins, Joana Vasconcelos, Rodrigo Oliveira, Bruno Cidra, Claire de Santa Coloma and Carlos Bunga, artists who explore different artistic languages, materials and creative processes.
According to curator Margarida Almeida Chantre, the works on display transform sculpture into a 'mutating organism', where materials associated with durability coexist with ephemeral, organic or industrial elements, creating tensions between natural and artificial, between solid and fragile. Matter is no longer only a medium,
becoming an active agent of transformation and inviting the visitor to a sensory and symbolic experience that goes beyond mere contemplation.
‘SCULPTURE. TRANSMUTATION’ thus proposes an interpretation of sculpture as an expanded field of experimentation, where construction and dissolution, presence and absence coexist, establishing transformation as an essential condition of the work itself.
