SAM M LUNG
Selected objects and works from the Missika Schönfeld Collection
Part 1, curated by Adrien Missika
with: Saâdane Afif, John M. Armleder, Kinga Kielczynska, Fabian Knecht, Isa
Melsheimer, Steve Paul Steven Paul, Mandla Reuter, Sophie-Therese Trenka-Dalton
Exhibition February 15 – 20 April, 2019
Fundação Belo Campo
This exhibition is the starting point of Belo Campo’s damp basement as a museum space. The Missika Schönfeld Collection has been relocated from Berlin to Belo Campo’s friendly host, Galeria Francisco Fino. Belo Campo will present a permanent exhibition of sorts, which will be intersected by temporary projects. Guests will be invited to curate new presentations of the collection on an irregular basis. This project’s set of rules is arbitrary, temporary, unstable, playful, and wishes to engage with legitimate and dissident cultural structures.
Belo Campo faces climate challenges of its century: being underground and sitting on a riverbed which can rise at any
moment. Its humidity level fluctuates between 85% and 100%, hence, and since we are rather serious about conservation matters, all delicate works may be displayed sealed in vacuum transparent bags.
1+1= 3
Our collection relates to love, the partnership of two people in space and time, in life, translating often into the collectivization of their interests and things. Therefore, it articulates bits of the history of each of us before we met, as well as the one building from our shared life.
As in our case, an artist couple’s collection grows out of works exchanged with artist friends, with peers. The notion of value here doesn’t wish to be quantifiable or monetized. Works are exchanged or given on different occasions such as a birthday, a wedding, a friends-visit or an exhibition. Our collection is not only an art collection: we also collect objects that embody personal obsessions.
Sarah and I have put this collection together and, although there is intention poured in it, there is also chance – some works are gifts from beloved friends and, even though they were not “selected”, they are warmly welcomed in the
collection. This chance quality resembles the French saying “On a les amis que l’on mérite” (“one has the friends one deserves”) or, in this case “we have the collection we deserve”.
SAM M LUNG
combines objects carrying different status, which have in common the emotional value bestowed on them. All of them have achieved enough emotional relevance to be kept close, archived and now shown for the first time. Some are objects gifted by friends, most are artworks and others are things gathered overtime, like the set of “Almost Spherical Stones” collected in nature one by one. The narrative driving this exhibition is non-linear, as opposed to the horizontal display of suspended shelves. We hear a polyphony of tales emerging like a choir, and more voices await to join.