It might look like it but it's not. The set of colourful ceramic pieces that Vitor Reis presents here might, at first, appear to be an unsuspicious game of darts like those we can find in any bar or games room around the world. However, a closer look reveals that these projectiles and these targets reflect another nature, another reality, another game. Through the seemingly fun appearance that permeates the simplicity of this installation the artist weaves a serious and incisive comment on the perversity of war and the light-hearted way in which, today, it is frequently planned and viewed.
Offering a combination of ostentatious sets, technological props of a spectacular nature, and an aseptic narrative capable of attenuating its brutal nature, the contemporary theatre of war is regularly produced and presented like a new format of entertainment, a playful exercise that unfolds, and is consumed in a complicit way, from...a distance. If the small games of irony, the visual puns, the witty subversions of the real have been transversal to Vitor Reis' artistic practice, he reminds us here that there are certain things that should, in fact, continue to seem what they are. Such as those whose cost is very real, in terms of suffering and of destruction, to those who live them.
About the artist:
Vitor Reis (1974) was born in Angola and nine months later moved to Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, where he still lives and works. Descending from a family of three generations of traditional potters from this city known for its tradition in this field, he began by exploring sculpture but ended up adopting ceramics as his language of expression. With a degree in Fine Arts from ESAD, Caldas da Rainha, he also attended the Advanced Course in Visual Arts at the MauMaus School of Visual Arts, in Lisbon. Being able to act as an artist, a designer or a craftsman, his work responds both to his surrounding environment and to issues of the social and political sphere, capturing with a contemporary touch much of the energy from the humorous, critical and ironic tradition from Caldas. He has been exhibiting regularly in Portugal and participating in the International Sculpture Symposium in various countries.
Videos de la Exposición
VITOR REIS // UNDERDOGS ART STORE // LISBOA // 2018
Entrada actualizada el el 30 ago de 2018
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