_Pedro Cabrita Reis: a remote whisper_ at the Palazzo Falier, during the 55th Biennale di Venezia
“ A remote whisper” is an all-over intervention by Pedro Cabrita Reis, specifically produced as one of the collateral events on the occasion of the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, which encompasses all the rooms of Palazzo Falier’s 'piano nobile.'
The work flows through the rooms, embracing the walls, doorways and floors with raw square aluminium bars, fluorescent lights and free-hanging black electrical cords, inviting the viewer to engage in a path of random trajectories. It is a semi-precarious construction that integrates fragments of earlier works and archival material coming from the artist’s studio, as well as photos, drawings and paintings next to flotsam and jetsam found in the city.
Cabrita Reis, whose artistic practice has always sought to create a strong relation between the artwork, space and viewer, emphasizes in his project at Palazzo Falier his inclination to blend exhibition and work space.
Since the early 1990s, Pedro Cabrita Reis’s work has revolved around shelter, house, building, and territory. Alongside works based on such elements of daily life as tables and chairs, doors and windows, he has often taken possession of exhibition spaces with structures that were as complex as they were brutal.
"A significant number of his works have been or, are being done 'in situ'. Thus, they embody in the actual process of making art, a lingering presence of several paths crossing, like reminiscences and seemingly banal vernacular experiences; an aleatoric conception of hazard or of intellectual 'rigueur,' suggesting that each work proposes to us an ongoing 'inventory' of the world and simultaneously a model for its perception. This rather personal and intricate method of 'construction,' a characteristic of Cabrita Reis's artistic language is the prevailing approach for his exhibition at Palazzo Falier, which unfurls as a conversation with the memory of a place.", says Sabrina van der Ley
a remote whisper is organized on behalf of The Secretary of State for Culture of Portugal with the kind support of Galerie Nelson-Freeman, Paris | Ivorypress, Madrid | Magazzino, Rome | Mai 36, Zurich | Peter Freeman Inc., New York
Pedro Cabrita Reis
Born in 1956 in Lisbon, Pedro Cabrita Reis is one of the leading Portuguese artists of his generation. His complex work is characterized by an idiosyncratic philosophical and poetical discourse embracing a great variety of means: painting, photography, drawing, and sculptures sometimes composed of industrial and found materials. Concerned with questions relative to space and memory, his works gain a suggestive power of association which reach a metaphorical dimension going beyond the visual.
Pedro Cabrita Reis has participated in several international exhibitions, such as Documenta IX (1992), the 21st and 24th São Paulo Bienals (1994 and 1998), and the 10th Biennale de Lyon (2009). In 1995 and 2003 he represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale.
The book Pedro Cabrita Reis – a remote whisper, published by Ivory Press (Madrid, 2013) is available at Palazzo Falier during the exhibition and online.
