Julião Sarmento’s Alientos [Breaths] (2012) is a collection of fifty “empty” jars of different shapes and sizes, placed side-by side in an open cabinet. Each sealed jar is supposed to contain the breath of a contemporary artist, and carries the respective name-tag. The fifty names are selected from a group of artists included in a private art collection, and the work is gifted by the artist to the collector on the occasion of his 50th birthday. Alientos plays with the immateriality and ephemeral nature of its own medium, and questions a value system of artworks that is based on physical qualities and their permanence. The artist, who is also an art collector in his own right, highlights the difference between collecting names versus accumulating artworks versus “breathing the same air as the artist,” i.e. gaining direct access to the source of the ideas for the artworks.
The collector who is the inspiration for and the recipient of this artwork is Luiz Augusto Teixeira de Freitas. Lisbon-based Teixeira de Freitas collaborated with curator Adriano Pedrosa for ten years when he started building a contemporary art collection that was focused on architecture as a main theme. Since concluding this phase, he has diverted his attention onto literature, acquiring artists’ books as well as text-based ephemera and archival documents. Related to his collecting activities, having been involved in public-private partnerships within the art context, Teixeira de Freitas has been a vocal activist on issues concerning the lack of regulation in the art market and the conflicts of interest in and around art institutions. For more information, please visit collectorspace.org.