Pedro Cabrita Reis, Jimmie Durham and Cildo Meireles

Sprovieri is delighted to present a group show including works by Pedro Cabrita Reis, Jimmie Durham, and Cildo Meireles. The exhibition will feature works by the three internationally renown conceptual artists who have in common to work on simple materials and everyday life items reassembled in order to gain a suggestive power of association.

The show is organised in collaboration with Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo, where it will tour to from April 2 to May 25, 2019.

Pedro Cabrita Reis presents three new works (The Carpenter Suite #6, #7 and #8) realised specifically for the show. His complex practice is characterised by an idiosyncratic philosophical and poetical discourse embracing a great variety of means: painting, photography, drawing, and sculptures composed of industrial and found materials alongside with manufactured objects. Focused on questions relative to space and memory, the equilibrium between light and matter is expressed in the balance between architecture and image and "creates a reality in its own right, instead of reproducing it”. (Pedro Cabrita Reis)

In Durham’s sculptures and assemblages appears a mix of organic and artificial found items (including bones, plastic pieces, car parts and pipes), often re-composed questioning the fragile balance between nature and industry. The various elements co-exist among them in a visual clash at the same time poetic, funky, and decadent building up ambiguous and potentially endless layers of meaning. “We are in search of structures of signification: underneath a picture there is always another picture”. (Jimmie Durham)

Each piece in the show opens to new interpretations of the world and subverts its rules. Paradigmatic is Cildo Meireles’s work, where often the viewer’s perception, or even imagination, has an active role capable to alter it. In the lightbox Atlas (1995-2006), instead, the artist portrays himself - not without irony - as an opposite version of the myth of Atlas. Smiling, Meireles is standing upside down on Piero Manzoni’s famous pedestal of the world, Base del Mondo. In the words of the artist: “I am interested in the paradoxical relationship between objects”. (Cildo Meireles)

About the artists:

Pedro Cabrita Reis was born in 1956 in Lisbon, the city where he currently lives and works. His work has steadily received international acknowledgement, thus becoming crucial and decisive for the understanding of sculpture from the mid-1980s onwards. He has participated in many international exhibitions, such as Documenta 12 (2017), A Remote Whisper, collateral event of the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), 10th Biennale de Lyon (2009). In 2003, he represented Portugal in the 50th Venice Biennale. Among the past main shows: Documenta IX in Kassel in 1992; the 21st and 24th São Paulo Biennales, respectively in 1994 and 1998; and the Aperto section of the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997. Among his solo shows: MAXXI, Rome (2016); The Arts Club, Chicago (2015); Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon (2011); Pinacoteca Do Estado, São Paulo (2010); Hamburger Kunsthalle (2010); Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City (2009); Fondazione Merz, Turin (2008).

Jimmie Durham is an artist, poet, essayist and political activist. Born in 1940 in Arkansas, he lives an works in Berlin. Durham has participated in several editions of the Venice Biennale (2013, 2005, 2003, 2001 and 1999) and of the Whitney Biennale (2014, 2006, and 1993) and took part to the 6th Moscow Biennale (2015); 13th Istanbul Biennale (2013); Documenta 13 (2012); and Taipei Biennale (2012); among others. He was the recipient of Robert Rauschenberg Award by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York (2017) and the Goslar Kaiserring Prize (2016). His recent retrospective "At the Center of the World" (2017-18) travelled from the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, to Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Remai Modern, Saskatoon. Other recent solo exhibitions include venues such as the Smithsonian’s Hirschhorn Museum, Washington (2016); MAXXI, Rome (2016); Serpentine Gallery, London (2015); and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2015), among many others.

Cildo Meireles is considered to be one of the leading figures in conceptual art, having created some of the most aesthetically and philosophically captivating works of his era. Born in 1948 in Rio de Janeiro, where he still lives and works, Meireles’s work has been exhibited internationally, including the 37th (1976), 50th (2003), 51st (2005), and 53rd (2009) Venice Biennales; 16th (1981), 20th (1989), 24th (1998), and 29th (2010) Bienal de São Paulo; 8th (2003) and 14th (2015) Istanbul Biennial; and Documenta Kassel (1992 and 2002). Selected recent solo exhibition include HangarBicocca, Milan (2014); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2013); Museo Serralves, Porto (2013); Itaú Cultural Center, São Paulo (2011); MUAC Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2009); MACBA, Barcelona (2009); Tate Modern, London (2008); and Estação Pinacoteca, São Paulo (2007).