Pedro Cabrita Reis: One
Place and Another
Tracy Williams Ltd.
313 bis West 4 Street
New York NY 10014
212 229 2757
March 13 to May 1, 2004
By JOE
FYFE
Pedro Cabrita Reis One Place and Another 2004
wood, car paint and bricks, 51 x 29-1/2 x 8 inches
COVER: April 9, 2004, shows Do you still love me? 2004
Aluminum, glass and fluorescent lamp, 35 x 64 1/4 x 26 inches
Amid the jostling artworks
comprising the recent Armory Show an unusually serene sculpture took
up the central area of one of the booths. Constructed of weathered wood,
pieces of extruded aluminum door panels and a fluorescent light fixture,
it was a little over seven feet high and was bisected diagonally by
a standard hollow core door. It stood on four spindly corners. The viewer
could just about walk under it. The work might have been done by a master
flower arranger: harmony of elements was achieved through careful attention,
but here the effect was brought forth from a collection of remnants
from an office building site. The work was by Pedro Cabrita Reis, a
Portuguese artist who has shown widely in Europe.
"One Place and Another,"
an exhibition of recent work by Reis, has opened at a new gallery, Tracy
Williams Ltd., located on the garden level and first floor of a townhouse
in the West Village. The intimate scale of the gallery magnifies both
the harshness of Reis' materials and the warm poetry of their assemblage,
a hybrid of painting, sculpture and architecture.
A tower-like structure, "Favorite
Places #5," (2004) with dangling wire and a peeking scrap of wood
paneling, took up the main room. Close proximity enfolded the viewer
in its odd spaces. Reis is partial to auto paint, which is introduced
into most of the works. He is a lyrical colorist, partial to tan, off-aqua
and woody orange. Two wall-mounted reliefs were made from metal angles
that held thick sheets of glass painted from behind. These works created
a kind of wall screen/picture that echoed the moments when one passes
storefronts on the street. They are also reminiscent of traveling by
public transportation--another experience of shuffling pictures. Elsewhere,
two shiny aluminum tables were partially adjoined in an almost embarrassing
embrace.
The title piece, "One
Place or Another," (2004) was a simple shelf attached to the wall
above a small pile of bricks that situated itself in ineffable repose.
Reis' choice to work with these materials enables the viewer to reconstruct
a common urban experience in new terms. Our interactions within the
spaces of modern buildings are lent a quiet magic, as if the artist
is bestowing us with his own imaginative power that we can take along
with us to the office.
