‘This is not an “architecture” exhibition’ could be the alternative title for the group of works that are presented in this exhibition triptych. Because its aim is not to think about architecture as just a constructed thing or the materialization of a functional programme but as a utopian, metaphorical space that is often characterised by its absences, gaps and empty spaces.

The title is based on a quote by Gordon Matta-Clark who argues that we do not present a work but that its presence is made present in the way that we think about architecture, a phenomenon which the artist named Anarchitecture. This idea, so Matta-Clark tells us, ‘is about how to make a space without constructing a beautiful place ’ and making, for this artist, is destroying, criticising, opening, inverting.

The exhibition has been organised on two different levels. The first was a dialogue with the photographs of the BESart collection. This was the starting point and an iconographic and symbolic element, that is, an element of tension with which a critical dialogue was established for the creation of this universe of images and spaces.

The works from the BESart collection were selected collectively in a process of dialogue that contaminated and expanded the chosen themes. These themes, which were first presented to the architects and then to the photographers, are related to issues which, on the one hand, partially mark the debate on architecture and, on the other, are central to the works that these architects have been developing.

Four themes were chosen to be presented in three different exhibition spaces: Landscape by Paulo David at Appleton Square; Process by Daniel Malhão, Joana Vilhena and Ricardo Carvalho and Reuse by Inês Lobo and Paulo Catrica at BES Arte & Finança; Theatre by Diogo Seixas Lopes, Nuno Cera and Patrícia Barbas at Teatro Thalia.

Although all the works are related in an important way, there is also a significant degree of autonomy that arises not only from the geographic distance between the venues but especially from the uniqueness of each proposal.

Nuno Crespo