Pedro Cabrita Reis

de Jo o Fernandes, Jose M. Miranda Justo, Adrian Searle, Michael Tarantino, Pedro Cabrita Reis

"Since the early nineteen nineties, the work of Pedro Cabrita Reis (born 1956 in Lisbon) has revolved around the subjects of homes, housing, architecture and territory. Alongside works based on such elements of everyday as tables and chairs, doors and windows, he also regularly creates installations which take possession of exhibition spaces by means of architectonic structures that are as complex as they are violent. With hulking brick walls, found objects and industrial materials such as neon tubes, sheets of glass, steel supports or coarse boards he undermines the classic white cube or unceremoniously occupies a large baroque ceremonial room with a series of shantytowns Crudely knocked together house boxes such as The Project (2002) deny a look inside; doors lead nowhere, staircases into nothingness. Blind Cities is the title of a group of works whose stoic, melancholy appearance references the "homelessness" of humanity as a basic constant of the human condition and thus to one of the leitmotifs of Cabrita Reis's oeuvre."--Publisher's website.