In 2012 Rui Calçada Bastos participated in an exhibition entitled »Unfinished Journeys« at the Oslo Museum of Contemporary Art; the title could as well serve as heading for a substantial part of his oeuvre. A certain nomadic restlessness of both, people and objects is to be found already in Calçada Bastos’s early works such as […]
Celina Brás-A vida constrói-se através do olhar e o olhar é esculpido pelo tempo. As fotografias são fragmentos de tempo que confirmam a realidade mas dão, também, espaço à encenação e ficção desse mesmo real. Calçada Bastos revela-nos uma curiosidade infinita e um encantamento por movimentos invisíveis, imperceptíveis ao olhar mais descuidado mas que no […]
João Silvério | September 2014
Reflections, doublings and confrontations are variations on a leitmotiv running through Rui Calçada Bastos’s videos, photographs and installations – in the real just as the metaphorical sense. They are about the self and the other, the inner and the outer, the here and there. The artist continually changes his position in the perpetual attempt towards […]
Patrícia Rosas | August 2013
Rui Calçada Bastos’s practice frequently involves biographical elements, ranging from personal relationships to emotional states associated with people, places, and objects encountered by the artist. In his videos, photographs, and sculptures, he develops poetic narratives that offer a melancholic vision of the world. In “Avalon,” his first solo show at this gallery, seven recent works […]
Quatro fotografias de “atelier”, duas fotografias de exterior, uns banais ténis sobre o chão, uma escultura e um vídeo compõem as peças em exposição na Galeria Pedro Oliveira. A escultura (dois casacos, na manga dos quais se enfia uma lâmpada com braço comum) dá o nome à exposição segundo um pretexto romântico e reflexivo (“Loneliness […]
Foreword Rui Calçada Bastos is a nomad. Thus, travel, dislocation, homelessness and a lack of sense of belonging are prominent issues in his work. To a certain extend this is also echoed in his visual language. In fact, it is the remarkable coherence of formal, visual qualities and the content and subject matter that make […]
Rui Calçada Bastos’ piece Ten Years Looking Forward To See You from 1999 consists of two video projections facing one another. On both walls people of different ages, sexes and from varied ethnic groups can be seen looking into the camera. For this, he used video material taken over almost a decade. During this period […]
Me, Myself and I Diogo Lopes Clichés may only surface to existence given their anchorage to a pervasive universal truth, rarefied yet nevertheless factual. As far as art is concerned, to label it as a vessel for the manifestation of subjectivity seems to be nothing short of a tautological display. If this is indeed its […]