Pedro Cabrita Reis

This is the first exhibition in Greece for Portuguese artist Pedro Cabrita Reis, at Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Centre. Pedro Cabrita Reis is one of those rare occasions of artists who have been actively present since mid-80s, within the renewal of contemporary sculpture.

The artist makes use of simple recycled materials, memories and knowledge of daily life. He transfers the question of assemblage of materials to the process of making an art object, through a poetic discourse, which finds some of its principal references within an intimate, personal history, as well as in the cultural roots of his Portuguese origin.

Pedro Cabrita Reis is interested in anthropological thought and in his work he incorporates emotions, memories and questions. His work has a clear social dimension. He is not interested in making a naïve political statement; as an artist, he sees himself as the architect of ambiguous, multiple meanings.

The artist approaches some of the classic issues of sculpture, such as light and space, within a new scope, redefining thus the relationship between architecture and the art object. The space of a painting with its contrasts of form and colour leads to the reconstruction of memories, within a particular interior and exterior communication. The idea of City and the idea of House become in Pedro Cabrita Reis work a permanent exaltation of the human presence in the world. At the Venice Biennial of 2003, in the Giardini and the Giudecca, the artist developed a subjective and idiosyncratic confrontation with space, as a social construction. His work brings together the subjective, individual consciousness and everyday life, inducing thus a reconstruction of memory, an expansion of meaning, a reconstruction of the world. Pedro Cabrita Reis represented Portugal at Venice Biennial of 2003. Pressetext

Pedro Cabrita Reis
sculpture