Pedro Barateiro presents a sequence of installations that include “staged” sculptures, found objects, photographs, drawings, paintings and films that encompass the five connected galleries on the ground floor of the Kunsthalle Basel until 14 November 2010.
Barateiro’s multifarious practice can be situated within a contemporary mode of post-studio production that is neither bound to one medium nor limited to any particular type of skilled object- making. Instead, the Lisbon-based artist primarily works with existing popular images, documents, literary texts, found objects and artworks gleaned from a diverse range of contexts. Barateiro’s practice is driven by a critical “re-reading” of those cultural and historical texts that play a major role in determining our perception of reality. Rather than mirroring or otherwise directly responding to lived experience, Barateiro relays highly coded and fragmented statements, mediated by complex visual signs that possess the quality of things remembered from dreams, while simultaneously relating to specific referents. [Read more ...]

Images:
The Mask of the Hunter, 2010 Courtesy the artist
Amanhã não nasce ninguém, 2009, 16mm b&w film transferred to DVD, viroc, rear projection screen, poster, edition of 450, 190 x 110 x 450 cm. Sound composion by Manuel Mota. View of the installation of the exhibition 'Amanhã não nasce ninguém' in Ezpazo Anexo, MARCO, Vigo, 2009. Foto: MARCO/ Borja Bernández Armada
Summa Cavea, 2010, viroc, wood, two chairs, acrylic paint, 86 x 260 x 125 cm