The fifth catalogue of the series Avvistamenti/Sightings is dedicated to the portuguese artist Pedro Cabrita Reis, eclectic personality who expresses himself through sculptures, installations, drawings and paintings.
The catalogue is planned by a temporal route that begins from the current exhibition at the GAM, to which the works of the most recent years follow, going back in time with the images from his archive's works.
The book opens with the complete photographic documentation of the works expressly done for the GAM, with both individual works and exhibition's views , to which other two images sections follow, intercalated by the pages of the text by Doris Von Drathen, Giving Heed to Silence, which describes Pedro Cabrita Reis' works as occupied by silence and light. The author mentions the Cidades Cegas, 1998, sheds and huts stuck together, hang up and closed that let feel the choking interior that prevents breathing, the Wrapping Tape Landscape # 1, 1999, where the sealing up landscape doesn't breath and stand in the silence, and the Cathedral # 2, 1999, made by red bricks lined up and covered with light that create a space suitable for "giving heed to silence".
Pedro Cabrita Reis was born in Lisbon in 1956. His first works are paintings of everyday objects placed in mysterious settings, but by the 1980s his production had already turned towards sculpture and installations. Starting from the architectural space that surrounds him, he uses everyday objects (chairs and tables) that he binds with industrial materials (neon lamps and bricks) to create abstract creations; his aim is to make the viewer interact with the new spaces he has organised. He has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including Documenta IX (1992), the 45th Venice Biennale as part of the Portuguese pavilion (1995) and as a soloist (1997). In 2003 he represented Portugal at the 50th Venice Biennale exhibiting two installations; in 2006 he presented a site-specific installation at the Macro in Rome. In 2009, he participated in the 10th Lyon Biennale and, in the same year, the Hamburger Kunsthalle presented a major retrospective with a selection of his work from 1985 onwards. In January 2012, the first monographic exhibition dedicated to him in Spain, Los Rojos, was completed at the Ivorypress gallery in Madrid.