Working with and in the cities that he traveled to or lived in (Macau, Shanghai, Paris, Lisbon, Berlin, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro) Calçada Bastos’ focuses on urban landscapes, objects, shapes and situations that would perhaps be overlooked at first glance. Working with photography, video, sculpture and drawing, he explores his themes poetically, confronting the viewer with a self-referential view. In a real and metaphorical sense, the reflections, duplications and confrontations constitute variations on a leitmotiv that runs through Rui Calçada Bastos’s videos, photographs and installations dealing with self and other, inner and outer, here and there. The artist continually changes his position in a perpetual attempt to reach towards self-assurance or anchorage, which never seem to take place.
