Study Proposal

This year I’m planning to continue working using a similar method to last year’s sculptures and installations. The main difference is that I want the final work to have rather a really well finished pristine look or a rough, almost anti-art, careless finish. It is important for me to explore these two extremes.

3D work will be my main area of interest, but I won’t stop myself from using photography, drawing, computer programs or even painting if it becomes relevant (the same happened in 2004/2005).

Just like last year Craig Cooper and I will be cooperating in the recollection of objects, their re-contextualization and assemblage.

I’m aiming for a body of work that will have opposite effects on the observer: seduction and discomfort, interactivity and enigma. Enigma and discomfort will often be part of scientific, industrial, philosophical and psychological ideas I’ve started exploring in previous work. Seduction and interactivity will hopefully emerge from composition, colour, materials, transparent surfaces, lights, technology (data projectors, sound systems, simple mechanisms, prints and printers, etc…).


I’m planning to explore randomly (as I feel is more convenient) a long list of artists: Da Vinci, Maeda, Kandinsky, Calder, John Cage, Kitaj, Donald Judd, Bosh, Rebecca Horn, Basquiat, Jean Tinguely, Barceló, Dan Flavin, Marcel Duchamp, Lin Cohen, Tony Crag, Goya, Anish Kapoor, Rauschenberg, Cabrita Reis, Rothko, Oursler, Caro, Keifer… Some of them were already important to my work but I just couldn’t avoid mentioning them. Probably most of the content of the work will come from philosophers, scientists and writers such as: Nietzsche, Joyce, Wittgenstein, José Gil, Susan Sontag, Gödel, Heidegger, Blogglie, Schrödinger, Plato, Freud, Derida, Bohr, Heisenberg… Some crucial ideas may just emerge from everyday life, the internet, advertising, criticizing Craig Cooper’s recent obsession with existentialism or his “old POMO” attitude, or even his critics to my references (most of them painters), neuro-psychology investigations and Portuguese more or less typical obsessions.

Objects skipped by the engineering school are certainly going to be visually and conceptually inevitable since they work like an emotional residue of my current Portuguese engineering university (yes it’s true, ironically, I’m still a biological engineering student). Squares and Cubes will probably play a central role in my work since the Portuguese typical floor (calçada) and walls (ceramic tiles) have these shapes and also because it is a simple unit that resembles a pixel allowing me to use it in a modular system or a “cellular tissue”. This works like a bridge between my past and my present. Patent books are very likely to become the most relevant visual influence during this year. If last year they were already relevant, this year I may use them more intensively and deeply.