How did this project for ARCO come about?

As in previous years, Porta 33 is presenting a project by a single artist, Rui Carvalho, at the Madrid International Contemporary Art Fair — ARCO 05, in a selection of a group of works that the artist has periodically sent to the gallery by post since 2001.

Who is the artist?

Rui Carvalho was born in Funchal in 1964 and currently lives in Lisbon. He is an artist who is removed from the media that celebrate and legitimise contemporary art. A part of his production has been sold by the artist on the streets of the cities in which he has lived: from Zurich to Berlin, from Funchal to Lisboa.

Why?

His work, which has until now been known above all to a restricted circuit of friends, aroused some curiosity and attention on the Portuguese art scene with the exhibition that the Porta 33 organised in Funchal in May 2000 (See “Parallel Universes”, in Expresso, 17/06/2000). This opening to a very unique and atypical path, with works that figure between cartoon strip and painting, was particularly due to the enormous boost granted by the drawings that Rui Carvalho carried out at the end of the eighties and early nineties. These new developments of his work and the persistence of his stance as an artist are what motivated this current presenting of Rui Carvalho at the Madrid ARCO 2005.