Nuno Sousa Vieira
Biography
Born in Leiria, Portugal, in 1971. Nuno Sousa Vieira currently lives and works between Leiria and Lisbon.
With a Masters Degree in Painting at Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa (Fine Arts University of Lisbon), he is a PhD candidate at the same school.
Recent Solo Shows: “Double / Double”, SE8 Gallery, London, United Kingdom; “Instruções para pensarmos juntos”, Portuguese Consulate in São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; “1:1 – 21 Artistas Contemporáneos Portugueses / Una reflexión sobre la escala en la arquitectura y la obra de arte”, Tabacalera. La Principal, Madrid, Spain; “Nasci num dia curto de inverno”, Fundação Portuguesas das Comunicações, Lisbon, Portugal; “As medidas do seu espaço e os acontecimentos do meu passado”, Q22 – Colégio das Artes da Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal; “Sin piedras no hay arco”, Galeria Espacio Olvera, Seville, Spain; “Utopia”, Portuguese Consulate in Seville, Spain; “From darkness to light”, Galeria Graça Bradão, Lisbon; “The volume of the visible”, Gallerie Emmanuel Hervè, Paris;
In 2010/2011, he held three important solo exhibitions: “Somos nós que mudamos quando tomamos efetivamente conhecimento do outro”, at Pavilhão Branco (Museu da Cidade) in Lisbon, “Don’t underestimate the impact of the workplace”, at Newlyn Art Gallery and The Exchange, United Kingdom, and “Haben Gegenstände ein Gedächtnis?”, at Hans Mayer Gallery, Germany. He has also presented a solo project at ARCO, Madrid, curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti.
Other significant solo exhibitions are “Wall Stop for This”, Appleton Square, Lisbon, 2012; “Terça-feira a Sábado – 11h às 20h”, Galeria Graça Brandão, Lisbon, 2010; “Chão Morto”, Carpe Diem, Lisbon, 2009; “To Draw an Escape Plan”, Galeria Graça Brandão, Lisbon, 2009 and “Redesenhar”, Empty Cube, Lisbon, 2008.
In sculptures made out of an array of discarded factory materials and old office furniture, Nuno Sousa Vieira explores opposites: consumption and usefulness versus refuse and obsolescence; the mass-produced versus the handmade; function over form versus form over function. Sousa Vieira renders utilitarian materials useless, while referencing their former functions and investing them with new life as elegant sculptural works. In Próspero (2006), for example, he transforms two wooden stepladders, perilous to climb, into gently torqued sculptures of artfully composed vertical and horizontal lines.
His work is represented in several collections: PINTA – Latin America, CAV (Centro de Artes Visuais), Coleção Teixeira de Freitas, Colecção PLMJ, Coleção António Cachola, Câmara Municipal de Leiria, Coleção Paulo Pimenta, Coleção José Lima, Coleção António Albertino.
