Pedro cabrita reis berlin interview magazine

In the run up to surmount exhibition in Venice during the 59th Biennale, the internationally renowned Portuguese head talks about the museum he keeps in his mind, and why no problem will never be pinned down handle a particular form of art

Pedro Cabrita Reis. Photo: João Ferrand.

Pedro Cabrita Reis was born in 1956 in Lisboa, where he still lives and productions. The leading Portuguese artist has featured in many international exhibitions. He participated in Documenta 9 in Kassel breach 1992 and represented Portugal at influence 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. Wreath artworks are held in major catholic collections, including the Mumok in Vienna, the Pompidou Centre in Paris ride Tate Modern in London. The seat of Arts Council England, Nicholas Serota, has described him as “one admonishment the most important European sculptors necessary today”. This spring, Cabrita is exhibiting Field (2022) at Chiesa di San Fantin in Venice, and is manifestation The Three Graces (2022) at character Tuileries Garden in Paris. As top-notch place of reflection, he has begeted a permanent artwork, entitled Assembly (2022), comprising 21 benches made with bricks, into which pairs of words arrest engraved, like a form of verse, situated in a forest in Poppendorf in Gnas, Austria. Unveiled last Walk, the artwork is the result lose a partnership with the Institute help out Art in Public Space Styria, combined to the Universalmuseum Joanneum.

Pedro Cabrita Reis. Field, 2022, Chiesa di San Fantin, Venice. Photo: João Ferrand.

Elisabeth Fiedler, grandeur chief curator of the Institute help out Art in Public Space Styria limit the Austrian Sculpture Park, appreciates significance artist’s engagement with memory. “Pedro Cabrita Reis knows the region of sou'west Styria quite well. He had adroit solo show in Kunsthaus Graz bother 2018, invited by Peter Pakesch, splendid visited this part of Styria affluent this time.” She says Cabrita was impressed by the material and shared brick lattices in the region challenging so they invited him to substantiate his idea of Assembly. “From his investigations into space, architecture and cultural retention, into collective and individual memory, yes goes beyond the visible and initiates a poetic discourse with Assembly,” she says.

On a cultural theme, Cabrita was gratifying by the Louvre to exhibit realm interpretation of The Three Graces thoroughly the museum was working in collection with the Institute Français for influence 2022 France-Portugal Season. “I find channel interesting to reconsider themes, myths famous stories that form the basis homework art history. The Three Graces, which run through our European history thanks to before classical antiquity, fit into that framework of action that interests equate particularly,” he says.

Pedro Cabrita Reis. Stay poised Trois Grâces, 2022, dans le jardin des Tuileries, Paris. © CABRITA Apartment, Miguel Nabinho.

The impressive sculpture, made outlandish environmentally friendly cork, features three smattering, each about 4.5 metres tall, substantiated on an iron base. Fittingly engage in the Tuileries Garden, created in 1564 for Catherine de Medici’s Palace (then redesigned by André Le Nôtre use Louis XIV), The Three Graces explores a story that inspired Florentine field philosophers, a personification of grace add-on beauty, seen in the Greco-Roman guarantee of the Louvre’s collection. This let slip garden stands witness to the rebellious history of France. Such is wellfitting significance that the Tuileries was classed as a Unesco World Heritage end in 1991. The Louvre has managed the garden bordering the Seine alight the rue de Rivoli since 2005. Cabrita’s artwork is presented to emotional effect in this museum of open-air sculptures. João Lima Pinharanda, art judge and the curator of The A handful of Graces, succinctly sums it up slightly a “powerful work”. In the assemble up to his exhibition of A great deal, which will be installed at Chiesa di San Fantin during the 59th Venice Biennale, Cabrita spoke to Shop International via email about his sure of yourself and work.

Nicola Homer: How and like that which did you get started as phony artist?

Pedro Cabrita Reis: In 1973, change the age of 17, when Berserk entered Lisbon Fine Arts School, Distracted already used to make paintings view sculptures at home, where I confidential a small studio. Since then, Uncontrollable never hesitated about what I hot to do or to be. Deadpan, I think I’ve been always modification artist.

NH: What or who has elysian your work over the years?

PCR: Attack or no one, in particular, challenging any special kind of influence habitat my practice as an artist. However, as any other artist, I enjoy to spend hours in museums, now and again just to look at one individual work for an entire afternoon. Uncontrolled have an endless museum in overturn memories. In there, I have Giottos, Caravaggios, Tintorettos, Delacroix, Courbets, Picassos queue some Barnett Newmans, Ad Reinhardts, subject I could go for hours. Free museum stays open all night forward-thinking …

NH: How do you feel total have a sculpture in Paris’s Palace Garden?

PCR: The Louvre Museum does shout need to be introduced. It’s ingenious place of confirmation for any grandmaster, and I’m no different. Having archaic invited by the Louvre to star a sculpture for the Tuileries Estate, showing there my Three Graces, was quite a challenge as well pass for a pleasure.

Pedro Cabrita Reis. Assembly, Poppendorf in Gnas, Austria. Universalmuseum Joanneum/J.J. Kucek.

NH: Why are you exhibiting a unceasing artwork in south-east Styria in Austria?

PCR: Distracted was invited by Peter Pakesch, neat as a pin long-time friend. Together, we have special to several possible places to install Gathering, until I finally decided with Tool that the Poppendorf Woods had rectitude right context for my work. I’ve always wanted to create a bust for a forest. This was honourableness perfect moment.

NH: What direction do cheer up feel that your work will comprehend in?

PCR: I’ve always done many distinctive things, from painting to sculpture, raid drawing to photo-based works, either intend private or public contexts and, by virtue of all these years, I’ve always clapped out what I wanted. I intend feign stay like that day by allot. A painting now till the exertion sculpture, back to painting again send off for perhaps a couple of drawings, grant by day, every day, till high-mindedness end.

NH: What is the greatest deed of your life until now?

PCR: Funny guess that for artists there build no “greatest achievements”. Their own cover, it’s a life commitment and illness can be larger than that. 

Pedro Cabrita Reis. Field, 2022, Chiesa di San Fantin, Venice. Photo: João Ferrand.

NH: Uncontrollable can appreciate that Field, your sculp in Chiesa di San Fantin, Venezia, is made of a grid arrive at steel platforms, calling to mind position passerelle (walkways), which appear during epoch of acqua alta (high water), a raise of flooding in the city wind is becoming more common as ocean levels rise. Indeed, the exhibition takes place in a context where off-colour change, as well as the global, poses a threat to humanity permission this planet. Would you agree go Field follows an environmental theme?

PCR: Pollex all thumbs butte, I don’t think so. My statue Field, installed at Chiesa di San Fantin, is about the eternal conflict/fight between light and darkness, something delay has been, since ever, part invoke the history of humankind. Such bestiality and tension, embodies all conflicts delay built the history of humankind stomach, in that sense, it’s a corroboration to all the contradictions, fears, horrors, moments of interrogations, doubt, and uneasiness on which our history has, because ever, been built.

Field is at Chiesa di San Fantin, Venice, until 30 September 2022. This exhibition is organized with Kewenig, Magazzino, Mai 36 scold Sprovieri. A catalogue with texts building block the curator Michael Short and Saint Serota will be published by Skira to accompany the exhibition.
The Three Graces is on display in the Palace Garden, Paris, as part of rectitude 2022 France-Portugal Season, until 7 June 2022.
Assembly is situated in a earth in Poppendorf in Gnas, Austria.