4 Volte Io
25 may 2017 – 25 jul 2017
Third personal gallery show for Portuguese artist Pedro Cabrita Reis, following on from his shows in 2006 and 2012. Cabrita Reis is back in Rome for a gallery show two years after presenting his work La Casa di Roma, which has remained on display ever since at the MAXXI Museum in Via Guido Reni.
The artist has chosen to develop this exhibition by starting from a measurement and a canon – his own body, a frequent feature in his works, through sculpture, painting and photography. The four resulting works span the gallery’s two spaces through the dimension of four bodily positions: standing up, lying down, leaning, and with open arms. As so often in his work, Cabrita Reis starts from the real and then moves towards the abstract, using materials and elements from industry and the realm of construction.
4 Volte Io pursues a topic that, starting from the body, develops in space, cadenced by dimension and perspective in a rhythm calibrated by volume and colour.
Since the early 1990s, Pedro Cabrita Reis has made masterful use of architectural materials including cement, bricks, wood, steel, metal, beams and actual fragments of architecture, which he juxtaposes with elements from the visual arts such as enamels, pigment and neon light to create poetic, imagination-led works of great political value, capable of revealing memories associated with the context in which they are located and from where they come. The artist’s work revolves around the issues of habitation and building. He develops his work in relation to space (understood as extended territory), using simple objects associated with everyday life to create installations that expand until they become imposing and complex structures, capable of enveloping the entire exhibition space.
Pedro Cabrita Reis was born in Lisbon in 1956, where he lives and works. He has shown at a number of international expositions such as Documenta IX in Kassel in 1992, the 22nd and 24th São Paulo Biennials in 1994 and 1998, and the Venice Biennale in 1997 and 2003, representing Portugal. In 2013, a major solo show of his work was held in Venice, with the title A Remote Whisper. In 2016, his large sculpture South Wing was exhibited at Art Unlimited in Basel; a year earlier, the artist unveiled La Casa Di Roma for the area outside the MAXXI Museum in Rome. The work has remained on show outside the Zaha Hadid-designed museum ever since. In 2009, his work was exhibited at a retrospective that travelled to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Carré d’Art in Nimes (2010), the M-Museum Leuven (2011), and the Museu Colecção Berardo in Lisbon (2011). His solo show venues include the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico (2009), the Kunsthaus Graz and Fondazione Merz in Turin (2008), MACRO Future in Rome (2007), Haunch of Venison in London (2005), and the Camden Arts Centre in London (2004). His recent group shows include Sphères 2010 at Le Moulin, the Lyon Biennial (2009), the Fundacion/Colleccion Jumex in Mexico, and the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Saint-Etienne Métropole (2008). Works by the artist feature in prestigious collections including MACRO of Rome, FRAC of Marseilles, GAM of Turin, the Tate of London, the Hamburger Kunsthalle of Hamburg, the Fundaciòn Jumex of Mexico City, SMAK in Ghent, MUMOK in Vienna, the Folkwang Essen Museum of Essen, the Berardo Museum; the Fundação PLMJ of Lisbon, MUDAM of Luxembourg and CAC of Malaga.
MAGAZZINO
Via dei Prefetti, 17
Rome
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