Rui Chafes was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1966. From 1984 to 1989 he attended the Lisbon Academy of Fine Arts, and after graduation went to Germany, where he was coached by Gerhard Merz at the Dusseldorf Arts Academy in 1991-92.<\/p>\n\n
That stay sparked his interest in German culture, particularly German art and literature \u2014 he has translated Novalis\u2019s Fragments<\/em> into Portuguese, which he often quotes. Initially using short-lived materials, such as wood, reed or plastic, he created ephemeral installations like the piece found at his first solo exhibition, P\u00e1ssaro Escondido<\/em> [Hidden Bird], held in Lisbon\u2019s Galeria Leo in 1986. Around 1987, however, he started using black painted iron, which has become his only material of choice. The ambiguity of matter and form conferred by the apparently light and organic shapes taken by iron is one of the main and most distinctive characteristics of his work. Other constants may yet be identified in his oeuvre, such as the importance of his pieces\u2019 titles (often pointing to the artist\u2019s personal universe), the relevance of the site where his work is to be located and the relationship between each piece and the surrounding natural environment.<\/p>\n\n Therefore, Chafes carefully examines the space, whether a gallery, museum hall or part of a landscape, as well as the way in which the piece \u201csits\u201d in it. He has made several outdoor sculptures, of which Sem o teu nome<\/em> [Without your name], built in 1996 for the 3rd International Symposium of Contemporary Sculpture, is but one example. In 1995 Rui Chafes represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale (along with Jos\u00e9 Pedro Croft and Pedro Cabrita Reis), and in 2004 he was at the S\u00e3o Paulo Biennale presenting Comer o Cora\u00e7\u00e3o<\/em> [Eating the heart], a project in collaboration with Vera Mantero. Among his vast number of solo exhibitions, held both in Portugal and abroad, it is worth pointing out \u201cDurante o Fim\u201d, staged at the Sintra Modern Art Museum of Pena National Palace (Sintra, 2000), as well as \u201cO peso do Para\u00edso\u201d, his first retrospective, at the Modern Art Centre of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":3413,"template":"","class_list":["post-3668","artistas","type-artistas","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miec.cm-stirso.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistas\/3668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miec.cm-stirso.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistas"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miec.cm-stirso.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/artistas"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/miec.cm-stirso.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistas\/3668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3789,"href":"https:\/\/miec.cm-stirso.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistas\/3668\/revisions\/3789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miec.cm-stirso.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miec.cm-stirso.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}