The exhibition Júlio Pomar and Pedro Cabrita Reis: Of small things curated by Sara Antónia Matos, continues a programme of exhibitions at the Atelier-Museu that aims to connect Júlio Pomar’s work with the work of other artists and establish new linkages between the painter’s work and contemporaneity.
Since the beginning, this exhibition was conceived as a specific intervention in the space of the Atelier-Museum, where through objects, sculptures and assemblages, Júlio Pomar and Pedro Cabrita Reis explore compositions in varied materials revealing the intensity in and of small gestures.
The artworks are constructed from pieces or fragments of raw materials almost without the intervention of the artists, as if they were appropriated by the artists for the associations they hold within and then combined like stains or expanses of ink, without the need for modelling or other sculptural processes.
Pedro Cabrita Reis presents a series of sculptures and objects made from materials of various origins, including materials found on the street and the beach. Interestingly, it was also on the beach, during four months of vacation and work in Manta Rota in the Algarve, in the summer of 1967, that Júlio Pomar began to produce assemblages of objects and materials he found there, corroded and worn by salt, sun and time…
To a greater or lesser extent, these assemblages or constructions would punctuate the creative output of these two artists, acquiring both large and small dimensions at different times, but always carrying a certain measure of the strangeness and irony common to both artists. Through the artists’ combined work, the exhibition reveals the matter and extent of inner biography, of intimate things, of the small events in art and life, illustrating that the strength of a work does not depend on its size, but on the intention of each gesture and vision.
In conjunction with the exhibition, an interview with both artists conducted over an extended period of time will be published making it possible to understand the motivations and foundations inherent in the work through the artist’s own voice. The book with the interview with Pedro Cabruta Reis, as well as the exhibition catalogue featuring images of the works installed in the space will be released during the course of the exhibition at a date to be announced.
About Pedro Cabrita Reis:
He trained at ESBAL and began his career as a painter, exhibiting regularly from the beginning of the 1980s. During his career, he never abandoned the practice of painting, particularly the questioning of the tradition of geometric abstract painting which, in recent years, he has revisited in large installations of painting-objects, which bring together several recurring themes from his work. He has also continued to draw assiduously, producing almost always figurative work, with particular emphasis on series of self-portraits. It was, however, through sculpture and installation that Cabrita Reis found full national endorsement and widespread international recognition of his work in the early 1990s, leading him to participate in exhibitions such as Metropolis (Berlin, 1991), Documenta IX (Kassel, 1992), the 1994 São Paulo Biennial and the 1997 and 2003 Venice Biennales. In 2006, he occupied the central space of the ground floor at CAMJAP with the large installation ‘Fundação’, and, in recent years, he has exhibited his work around the world, in some of the most prominent contemporary art museums and spaces.