Pedro Cabrita Reis
Year, Birthplace 1956, Portugal
Nationality Portugal
Pedro Cabrita Reis was born in 1956 in Lisbon, the city where he currently lives and works. His work has steadily received international acknowledgement, thus becoming crucial and decisive for the understanding of sculpture from the mid-1980s onwards. His complex work can be characterized by an idiosyncratic philosophical and poetical discourse embracing a great variety of means: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, and installations composed of industrial and found materials and manufactured objects. By using simple materials that are submitted to constructive processes, Pedro Cabrita Reis recycles almost anonymous reminiscences of primordial gestures and actions repeated in everyday life. Centered in questions relative to space and memory, his works gain a suggestive power of association which reach a metaphorical dimension by going beyond the visual. The complex theoretical and formal diversity of the work of Pedro Cabrita Reis proceeds from an anthropological reflection, which is contrary to the reductionism of sociological discourse. In fact, it is on silences and indagations that the work of Pedro Cabrita Reis is based and built on. He participated in important international exhibitions, such as Documenta IX in Kassel in 1992, the 21th and 24th São Paulo Biennales, respectively in 1994 and 1998, in the Aperto of the Venice Biennale in 1997. In 2003, he represented Portugal in the Venice Biennale and participated in the twentieth Lyon Biennale, in 2009. Pedro Cabrita Reis selected solo exhibitions: Sometimes one can see the clouds passing by, Kunsthalle Bern (Bern, 2004); Stillness, Camden Arts Centre (London, 2004); True Gardens #3 (Dijon), FRAC Bourgogne (Dijon, 2005); Pedro Cabrita Reis, MACRO Museo d'Arte Contemporanea (Roma, 2006); La ciudad de adentro, OPA – Oficina para Proyectos de Arte (Guadalajara, 2007); True Gardens #6, Kunsthaus Graz (Graz, 2008); Pedro Cabrita Reis, Fondazione Merz (Torino, 2008); La Línea del Volcán, Museo Tamayo (Mexico City, 2009); Deposição, Pinacoteca de São Paulo (São Paulo, 2010), One after another, a few silent steps, Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg, 2009; Carré D’Art, Nîmes, 2010; Museum for Contemporary Art, Leuven, 2011; Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, 2011); States of Flux – Pedro Cabrita Reis, Tate Modern (London, 2011-2013); A Remote Whisper, Venice Biennial, 2013; Lifted Gaze, De Vleeshal (Middelburg, 2014); Alguns nomes, Galeria Mul.ti.plo (Rio de Janeiro, 2014); Fourteen paintings, the preacher and a broken line, The Power Plant (Toronto, 2014).