He has participated in group exhibitions since 1998. His first solo exhibition, in 1994, was held in the Boqueirão da Praia da Galé, in Lisbon, where, in the following year, he would create Pausa (Pause), a performative situation associated with a video installation. The presence of the artist as an actor would be maintained in other works, continuing to be linked to a strong existential, personal and biographical substrate, which feeds into the ideas of many of these pieces.

In Ten Years Looking Forward to See You (1998/99), the accumulation of known and unknown faces encountered outside of Portugal looking at the camera, and therefore at the artist, making him the deferred centre of the whole sequence, consolidates his ideas on working with this media.

The balance or aftermath of romantic relationships, whether happy or frustrated, can easily be discerned as the catalyst for creating some of his works. An example of this is Loneliness Comes from One (2003). Loneliness expressed to the other, in a denial of the very duality which begins with an affirmation, structures the meaning and devices constructed.

A train journey provided the occasion to capture images of a beautiful woman with closed eyes. Casting Thoughts (2000) gives us rhythmic access to areas of a face, keeping time with audible heartbeats, as if a windscreen was acting on a transparent film separating us from her sleeping or thinking space.

More recently, Left(L)overs (2004) metaphorically and choreographically portrays an attempt to release memories: we see a male character, from the back, expelling the dust from his jacket as it hits his shoulders – a gesture accompanied by a sound like a shot.

The importance of sound can be traced back to the installation Entrance/Exit (1999) in which, looking at a mirror from the front, we hear the sound of it breaking, along with the installation created for the Maia Biennale (Untitled, 1999), in which the sound of footsteps marks out the force of light passing through an obstacle. Structural duality, light, aphoristic words and faith in accidents of passage are other recurring aspects of his work.

In Work Table (2002-2003), two tripods supporting fluorescent lamps with written words are set off-balanced by means of video cassette stacks (one for each month) which are placed underneath the base of one of the sides.

In Studio Accident (2003), it is also imbalance (falling shelves) that once again takes the lead in another photographed studio situation. In the last edition of the Prémio União Latina (2005), the studio serves, in fact, as a resource for an exhaustive list of everything existing within it, with the transformation of the words into a film which visually organises them (Studio Contents, 2004).

A series of four videos, created between 2001 and 2002 and brought together under the name Quadrifoglio, develops the key aspects of this videographic language. The cinematic environment of these works (set to music, narrative, enigmatic in its succession) becomes a frequent feature.

In 2009, the artist created a light and sound installation in a public space in Rio de Janeiro: The Law of Silence. In the same year, Cabin Fever, at Appleton Square, Lisbon, provided the observer of his photos with an unexpected spatial experience. In recent years, Rui Calçada Bastos has undertaken photographic projects in the United States and Europe, fulfilling the travelling nomad condition which lies so close to his heart.

In 2011, he won an award at the 2nd International VAFA (Video Art For All) Festival organised by AFA (Art for All) and the Fundação Oriente in Macau, with his piece All That Glitters.

In 2012, he presented video and photographic work at the José Robles gallery, in Madrid, in an exhibition entitled If you're going through hell, keep going & Par Terre, at the Espace Photographique Contretype in Brussels.

In late 2012, he created The American Sunset, a solo exhibition held at the Vera Cortês gallery in Lisbon, bringing together works questioning his and our present created during a residency at Villa Aurora, California, with a grant for artists domiciled in Germany.

Leonor Nazaré

May 2013