The Misanthrope, 2002
steel

The sculptural work of Rui Chafes is built according to a cohesive project, conceived of and developed since the first public presentations of his work. In the second half of the 1980s a series of three solo exhibits in Lisbon introduced his work, made of diverse materials, wood, cane, and plastic, and animated by light and colour.

These pieces already suggested some of the structural postulates of his subsequent artistic production: the creation of delimited objects, the predomination of organic-like forms, the suggestion of lightness and dematerialisation enhanced by fragile materials. Furthermore, this work gave priority to the question of the relationship of the objects to space, in the sense that his pieces refuse the literal logic of the monument, and often have the effect of an installation.

Exhibition Summerpalace - A Garden from, for Artists, Neuss, Germany, Summer 2002

sources: summerpalace.de, camjap.gulbenkian.org