Underdogs Gallery
ARCOlisboa 2018

Underdogs Gallery has the pleasure to announce its presence at this year's edition of ARCOLisboa International Contemporary Art Fair, showcasing a special project by ±MaisMenos± (Miguel Januário).

Exploring the characteristics, debilities and contradictions inherent to the dominant political, social and economic system, the ±MaisMenos± project has developed in a reflective, critical and activist framework seeking to engender a practice that acts upon the observer in a thought-provoking and catalysing way geared towards social transformation. Operating both in the public space (with or without institutional sanction) and in exhibition venues, the project has been materialised in various actions and media such as installation, video and performance, but also painting, sculpture and assemblage, with a strong component of appropriation and détournement.

±MaisMenos± is an intervention art project by Portuguese visual artist and graphic designer Miguel Januário (b. 1981) that began in the scope of an academic thesis in 2005 and later gained a life of its own. Conducting a clinical dissection of reality that plays with the system of dualities intrinsic to the Western ideological edifice, the project's programmatic expression is conceptually reduced to an equation of simplicity and excluding opposites: more/less, positive/negative, black/white.
Alongside his numerous art interventions in the public space in various countries, the project has also been showcased in solo and group exhibitions in various institutional contexts such as Vera Cortês Gallery (Lisbon, 2010), MACE–Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas (Elvas, 2011, 2014), Underdogs Gallery (Lisbon, 2013, 2014, 2015), Caixa Cultural (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Brasilia, 2014), Museu do Côa (Vila Nova de Foz Côa, 2015), Centro de Arte Contemporânea Graça Morais (Bragança, 2015), MUDE–Museu do Design e da Moda (Lisbon, 2016), MACRO–Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma (Rome, 2016), Saatchi Gallery (London, 2017), Wunderkammern Roma gallery (Rome, 2017), Celaya Brothers Gallery (Mexico City, 2018), and leading art festivals and events such as Walk & Talk Festival (São Miguel, Azores, 2011), Guimarães European Capital of Culture (Guimarães, 2012), La Tour Paris 13 (Paris, 2013), Nuart Festival (Stavanger, 2014), and Forgotten Project (Rome, 2016).