The table is a common item, a space of encounter and communion, to celebrate life, where meals and the rest for the hours that sew our daily lives take place.

But the table can also be a place of writing, work, thought and reflection, and still a retreat to dream.

At the table you live, you talk, you think.

The traveling exhibition gets its name from a poem by Alexandre O’Neil, poet and visual artist with a significant work in the field of drawing, and begins with the table as a metaphor of the reality lived – a place of encounter, confrontation, communion, drift, and a social space, whether in the intimacy of the house or in an open and shared space such as the public space.

“A Mesa dos Sonhos” is a poetic way of talking about the encounters that the exhibited works evoke, often in a self-referential way. The artwork transforms our views and thus our thinking about the world that surround us, opening a field of possibilities for its understanding, but also works as a link connecting to other subjective realities, that each artwork reveals while bringing closer languages and codes that are appear distant to us.

Thus, the exhibition is an essential device in the relationship with the imaginary of the artists, and the presence and traffic of the spectator’s body in the space of the exhibition are the founding elements of this experience. Therefore, the exhibition is an essential device in the relationship with the artists imaginary, and the presence and traffic of the spectator’s body in the exhibition space are the founding elements of this experience.

“The Mesa dos Sonhos” brings together two collections of contemporary art that establish a dialogue and confrontation between different modes of production and thought – the collection of the Luso-American Foundation for Development, and the collection of the Serralves Foundation, both created in the last quarter of the 20th century.

In this exhibition you can find works from artists such as Ana Jotta, Helena Almeida, João Queiroz, Joaquim Bravo, Pedro Cabrita Reis and Alberto Carneiro, among others.

The exhibition is free and is part of a program to present works of the Serralves Collection, with the exhibition sites selected in order to make the collection accessible to diverse audiences from all regions of the country.

Calendar of the Itinerant Exhibition: 

Some FLAD pieces presented at Dream Table