Manuel Caeiro - Maus Contemporary

Manuel Caeiro

* M I K A D O *

Manuel Caeiro explores the limits of architectural forms in his complex abstract paintings. In the recent paintings, the shapes and lines of his previous works are extended into increasingly dazzling, and playful, compositions.

Architectural imagery and signage have long been staples of Caeiro’s visual vocabulary. Planes and other geometric shapes are his subjects, along with thin rectangular forms like caution signs. In the artist's recent works , this imagery is inserted into voids, removing the connection to man-made spaces. Instead, these new works function like allegories of painting. Some compositions, with planes like stretched canvases, resemble perilously-arranged artist’s storage; in other works, these painting-like shapes appear to topple like a house of cards. Balance, whether making a house of cards or painting, is one move away from falling apart.

Caeiro has recently made a transformative shift from complex paintings of architectural spaces to increasingly abstract compositions that insert imagery from his previous work into the void. Planes and other geometric shapes are the subjects of these highly-refined pictures which imply man-made spaces, but without specific reference. In his newest body of work, this imagery hangs in the air, suggesting an imaginary space, or a void. These compositions appear to focus on painter's spaces rather than architectural spaces, alternately resembling crowded rows of canvases, artist's loft storage with the room subtracted, or paintings falling like a tumbling house of cards. These works are allegories for the life of a painter, who must contend symbolically and physically with his or her own creations.

Manuel Caeiro has shown extensively in his native Portugal, as well as Spain and Brazil, and has recently begun to gain recognition beyond the Portuguese and Spanish-speaking world. The work of this exciting mid-career painter has revelatory implications for the continued struggle between painting and sculpture, and beta pictoris gallery is thrilled to introduce his work to a greater audience.

Manuel Caeiro (b. 1975 in Évora, Portugal; lives and works in Lisbon) studied at the Gabriel Pereira College of Arts, Évora and the University of Fine Arts in Lisbon. His work has been exhibited at the Modern Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the Barrié de la Maza Foundation in La Coruña, Spain; and the Contemporary Art Museum, La Coruña, Spain; among others, and is included in the collections of the Culturgest and the PLMJ Foundation, both in Lisbon, Portugal; the Banco Sabadell in Barcelona, Spain; as well as in private collections in the US, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Turkey, and Belgium.

Recent solo exhibitions include * M I K A D O * at beta pictoris gallery, Briefing Room at Ponce+Robles Gallery in Madrid, Spain; the exhibition Totem, at Galeria Lurixs in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and YellowMetric at Galeria Mário Sequeira in Braga, Portugal.

A biography on the artist is forthcoming in the Fall of 2016.