Lisbon, Transformation Shown | poster

MAAT, a giant fish located along the bank of the Vila Gale Opera, is a fascinating amphibious space: outside, the relationship with the river and the city skyline, inside the large exhibition spaces. The MAAT (Museum of Architectural Technology of Architecture), opened 7 years ago in Lisbon, based on a project by Welshman Amanda Jane Levitt, is a fantastic new beast of architecture (a bit like Renzo Piano’s Auditorium-Whale in Rome), which plays with our fluid counterparts and strict functionalities.

Outside, it is possible to travel everywhere, even on the surface, from which a tentacle-like path branches out that makes it pierce, in enveloping fashion, the heart of the city. But even the swift staircase at the entrance opens like a fan in a thousand nostrils, cracks of shadow and light. And Mawazine, her gleaming silver upholstery in the evening, is her festival dress for indoor fairs: this summer, the shift Written by Sandra Rocha, moderated by Joao Benrananda, also Director of MAAT, and “The Game” by Hervé de Rosa, recurring Marché aux puces At home, full of kitsch fetishes to get rid of.

The artist, whose works are exhibited in France at the Paul Valéry Museum in Sète, a former friend of Enrico Bagge, notes that his collection includes “pre-consumerism”: “When work becomes a market, I no longer care. But its genesis is always amazing: it is always unpublished, whether it is Mickey Mouse or Barbie ».

MAAT does not swallow all the arts of Lisbon. Around, not far away, three stunning and exclusive alternatives to visual culture have blossomed this summer: Three Other New Lisbon Icons.

The first, next to it, the derelict industrial complex of the electric company, another masterpiece of functionalist architecture, has been reconverted into another gallery: thus the predecessor of the MAAT, with its very high ceilings, privileged in distant times, became the ideal setting for works of contemporary art, such as those now installed there, audio-visual, Hello, are you there? By Luisa Cunha, who is more drawn to the charm of the places than their charm.

The second icon of Lisbon art is the multicolored, multi-storey, multi-“fantasy” factory of MAAT co-author Joanna Vasconcelos, busy during the visiting days (organised by the incomparable Pierre Laporte), with young Fiat workers working in every corner of her art castle (from crochet girls to plane boys), just days after the delivery of the commemorative cake in London.

But, above all, it is the third alternative that opens up to unexpected insights and understandings. At the neighboring Calouste-Gulbelkianh Foundation, the miracle is the Giacometti/Rui Chafes exhibition: that is, a revealing exhibition of Giacometti’s subtle and structural genius, recently reinterpreted by Tullio Pericoli in a brilliant pamphlet, published by Adelphi, on Kafka’s beloved The Hunger Artist.

A revealing exhibition: because, from a dialogue of confrontation, under the banner of elective connections, between the artist of yesterday and the one of today, a reinterpretation of the entire work of Giacometti appears, clear and intense, perhaps for the first time – after the brilliant restoration, more than thirty years ago, at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. in his “orchestral” interjections, as in the gallant amplification of anemic sculpture. deathChaves emphasizes the author’s intentions rather than stifling them.

Not to mention, in the excessive selection of some sculptures, in a few rooms, in a duly ‘jacometti’ void, the epiphany, for the first time in the world, of infinitesimally small sculptures, in the raw earth, not released, and therefore unmovable. So far.