“Pedro Cabrita Reis. Contra a Claridade” (“Pedro Cabrita Reis. Against Clarity”) was the name given to an exhibition of the works of Pedro Cabrita Reis (1956) on show in the Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão [José de Azeredo Perdigão Modern Art Centre] (CAMJAP) between May and July 1994, a year in which Lisbon was the European Capital of Culture.

The exhibition occupied a large area of the CAMJAP and brought together a significant selection of the artist’s recent works. The catalogue contained in-depth analysis of the oeuvre of Pedro Cabrita Reis, including essays by Alexandre Melo and José Miranda Justo, along with reproductions of all of the pieces exhibited.

Curated by José Sommer Ribeiro, Jorge Molder and Pedro Cabrita Reis himself, the exhibition presented a set of 18 pieces produced between 1989 and 1994, a period of work largely unfamiliar to the Portuguese public at the time. As such, of the 18 pieces on display, two – Posto de Observação (1994) and Sistemas de Constelações (1994) – were previously unseen, and only two – A Casa da Pobreza (1989) and Meus pais deram-me aquilo que podiam, alma da sua diversa (1993) – had been exhibited in Portugal.

On the choice to omit almost a decade of Cabrita Reis’s work – which, according to Jorge Molder, could be viewed as “his formative years”, prior to a renewed affirmation of his artistic praxis –, the director of the CAMJAP claims that the 1988-1989 period marked a turning point and a moment of profound transformation in the artist’s work, reflecting his personal and collective memory, emotions and musings, and an intimate experience that occupies the space between two opposite poles, embodying the constant tension between the heady world of romance and the world of restrained classicism: “a constant struggle between tumultuous, boundless creative energy and a remarkable restraint of intent.” (Pedro Cabrita Reis. Contra a Claridade, 1994)

The work exhibited in this retrospective situates Cabrita Reis within the 1990s movement that Alexandre Melo, in his catalogue texts, terms “new European sculpture”, a trend that began to emerge in the second half of the 1980s, drawing on Beuys and arte povera and spearheaded by Tony Cragg, Thomas Schütte, Juan Muñoz, Jan Vercruysse and Rachel Whiteread. In contrast to the sociological, pop art or conceptual leanings of American sculpture, “new European sculpture”, in the words of Alexandre Melo, “arises from various philosophical, anthropological, metaphorical and poetic values, opting for complexity, ambiguity and detachment and favouring dimensions such as subjectivity and memory” (Ibid.).

The relationship with self-portraiture and human scale, the unit of measure being the body of the artist himself, are common themes throughout Cabrita Reis’ oeuvre. Despite several references to his own personal background, which evoke memories of places and landscapes, revealing what Leonor Nazaré refers to as a “wandering mind, on the run, drifting and searching in a space of darkness”, his work can be understood independently, permitting interpretations that do not require knowledge of his biography (Nazaré, Expresso, 10 Jun 1994).

Similarly, we do not need to know the names of each individual piece in order to analyse them, as they do not describe the work or offer any clues as to its meaning, instead simply referring to an episode in the artist’s life, which resonates with the personal story of each viewer. The metaphorical dimension is central to the work of Cabrita Reis, enabling him to tackle weighty anthropological and metaphysical topics and values, such as primordial origins and life forces, something he does in an indirect, allusive and ambiguous manner.

The works exhibited are, fundamentally, defined by their stripped back nature, an approach that seeks to concentrate their visual impact, and by their monumental scale, achieved by completely filling the space in order to assert their presence, further enhanced by a streamlining of the colour pallet, at its most extreme restricted solely to white. This purity of form, combined with a conscious foregrounding of the wear and erosion of the materials, reveals the passage of time which, in several of the works produced during this period, is limited. Many of the works are site-specific and, after the exhibition for which they were created ends, they are destroyed, coming to exist only as plans.

The pieces produced between 1989 and 1992 are constructed of rough, crude materials such as wood and plaster and are predominantly white. These include the Casas series, a collection of works contemplating the theme of human use of nature, embodied in elements that allude to the domestic sphere, such as the house, the hearth, the well, the water tank, the fountain, the cistern and the drainage channel. Despite the diversity of these elements, the works are united by the theme of circulation or distribution of energy from a source of generation, such as the house or the fountain. However, this is not a simple reconstruction of a world of objects that generate and channel energy, but rather a record of human presence and occupation of nature.

From 1992, Pedro Cabrita Reis began to employ a larger and more varied range of materials, as illustrated by the Hospitais series. In this group, the artist tackles the theme of the hospital as a kind of house, which he develops though increasingly complex, exuberant constructions, using materials such as fabric and glass, rubber and copper tubes, lamps and other everyday objects.

Three pieces were acquired to coincide with the exhibition: one – D(oor), D(am) (1990) (Inv. 94E343) – from Galerie Barbara Farber and two – Natureza Morta (1992) (Inv. 95E351) and Meus pais deram-me aquilo que podiam, alma da sua diversa (1993) (Inv. 95E352) – from the artist himself.

“Pedro Cabrita Reis. Contra a Claridade” was covered in the April-June 1994 edition of Colóquio/Artes. In the subsequent editions, the same magazine published an article by Cristina Azevedo Tavares, in which the art critic praises the exhibition, calling it an “excellent Pedro Cabrita Reis installation” (Tavares, Colóquio/Artes, Jul-Sep 1994, p. 69).

The exhibition later went on display in Fundação de Serralves, from 19 May to 10 July 1994.