Pedro Barateiro: Today our eyes are closed

Kunsthalle Lissabon is proud to present Pedro Barateiro's most recent project, Today our eyes are closed. The film, whose title is also the title of the exhibition and is the central piece of the project, uses footage gathered in two different locations, the São Paulo University's Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (Faculdade de Arquitectura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo) and the garden of the National Museum of Theatre (Museu Nacional do Teatro) in Lisbon. Today our eyes are closed will be shown simultaneously in Lisbon and Basel, and in its structure already exists the idea of simultaneity of spatial representations.

Barateiro has been developing an approach that is both critical and self-reflexive, addressing concepts such as narrativity, fiction, ideology and archive and their central role as social technologies for the production of space (and the perception of that same space), wether it is narrative, temporal or ideological space. The essentially subjective and social nature of how these spaces are produced, the discourse connected to them, their legitimation and endless reproduction thus become the target of a systematic research that aims at destabilizing binary categories of knowledge such as fiction-reality, construction-recovery, architecture-archeology, narrative-theory, etc. The refusal of binary thought acts as a strategy for the development of a generalized regime of doubt that explicitly refuses the normativeness and standardization of a world that no longer sees itself reflected in the ethics/aesthetics of the grand progressionist narrative of modernity.

Pedro Barateiro was born in Almada, Portugal, in 1979. He lives and works in Lisbon. Barateiro received his MFA from the Malmö Art Academy, in Malmö, Sweden and his BA from ESAD, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. He was artist in residence at Pavillion – Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2008-09) and at ISCP - International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York, USA (2007-08). Some of his solo shows include Today our eyes are closed, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, Portugal (2010); Theatre of Hunters, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2010); Theory of Speech, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2009); Amanhã não nasce ninguém, MARCO, Vigo, Spain (2009); Domingo, Pavilhão Branco - Museu da Cidade, Lisbon, Portugal (2008); Composição, Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, Portugal (2007); Travelogue, Peep Galleri, Malmö, Sweden (2006); What Are We doing Here?, Spike Island, Bristol, UK (2005) and This is the place to be standing, Salão Olímpico, Porto, Portugal (2005). His work has been featured in several group shows, namely the 29th São Paulo Biennale, 16th Biennale of Sydney – Revolutions: Forms that turn, Sidney, Australia (2008), When things cast no shadow – 5th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, Germany (2008); Por Entre as Linhas, Museu das Comunicações, Lisbon, Portugal (2007), and Busan Biennale 2006, Busan, South Korea (2006). Pedro Barateiro is represented by Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon.

Exhibition supported by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

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