The Power Plant

The Power Plant is pleased to present the first Canadian solo exhibition of work by Portuguese artist Pedro Cabrita Reis. The exhibition continues the artist’s investigation into the perceived boundaries of architecture, sculpture and painting. Presenting an all-encompassing intervention at The Power Plant, Cabrita Reis creates and produces this new project with the space of the gallery in mind.

Throughout his practice, Cabrita Reis at once examines and challenges the ways in which sculpture and painting might alter, define or question the limits of space. In order to do so, his work is often created in situ and embodies the process of art making. Various materials are used throughout the artist’s work. He combines everyday objects such as chairs, tables or doors with industrial materials such as neon lights, steel girders and bricks. In so doing, Cabrita Reis turns the familiar into new and abstract compositions. For instance, his project a remote whisper (2013), produced on the occasion of the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, took over the interior of a domestic space, flowing throughout the rooms and overtaking its walls, doorways and floors. The immersive environment was created using aluminum bars, fluorescent lighting and free-hanging black electrical cords combined with fragments of the artist’s earlier works, material culled from his personal archive and detritus found throughout the city. By uniting each of these elements, Cabrita Reis created a truly complex visual narrative that overtakes and occupies the space in which it was installed.

Although many of the artist’s works are three-dimensional in character, Cabrita Reis sees his pieces as both informed by painting and functioning aesthetically within the pictorial register. Despite the industrial material used in his projects, the artist creates his work in line with painting vernacular, thereby broadening the scope of contemporary practices. Cabrita Reis’ construction at The Power Plant continues this possibility and offers an alternate view on contemporary modes of art making.

Fall 2014 Program Guide