Pedro Cabrita Reis

* 1956 in Lisbon, Portugal; lives in Lisbon

Pedro Cabrita Reis’ work has steadily received international acknowledgement, thus becoming crucial and decisive for the understanding of sculpture from the mid-1980’s 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, Cabrita 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 Cabrita 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 Cabrita is based and built on. Besides numerous important solo exhibitions, he participated in main 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 Xème Biennale de Lyon, “The Spectacle of the Everyday”, Lyon, 2009.