LYNCH THAM is pleased to present a seminal exhibition of new works by leading Portuguese contemporary artist Pedro Calapez, marking the debut of the artist’s work in the United States. Calapez will initiate a live installation of broken line, from 6pm to 7pm, during the opening reception on 10 September 2014.

Following critically acclaimed exhibitions in Europe, meadow-curtain-round-broken line, offers a succinct overview of Calapez’s fascination with spatial relationships, landscapes, and the significance of ways of seeing. Details are critical in his work, as this exhibition presents an exercise in exploration and discovery, encouraging an awareness of the different possibilities of the gaze. In each work, Calapez enters into dialogue with the architectural context as he evokes everyday encounters and memories through fragmented, richly colored reflections about light, space and landscape.

Meadow is a celebration of an encounter with landscape. More than a representation of a meadow, Calapez’s subject is the sensation of gazing and the revelatory and fragmentary feelings of the hot wind undulating over the plains or the cool shadows of passing clouds. In curtain, Calapez explores the invented superimpositions of light and darkness that hinder a clear definition of a space or place. The principle of visibility ensures presence, while the abstraction of darkness confuses the senses and invokes the imagination. round reflects fragments of other works, functioning as a mirror that subtly observes what is behind it. The circular edge produces centrifugal, centripetal movements, which alter the image that emerges within it. The two vertical “gashes” stabilize the painting, barring the paint from leaving its place. The limits of drawing and painting are tested in the installation broken line. The gesture of tracing a line to create a structural design on the ground recalls the game of hopscotch. Like the game, Calapez’s work presents a sequence of attitudes that have no defined aim or end in sight, stimulated by the continuous repetition of a movement. Mallarmé called attention to this in the preface to his poem un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hazard, where he said: "Everything takes place, in sections, by supposition; narrative is avoided." The lines drawn on each brick are fragments of an endless hypothetical line, fragments of knowledge reorganised into different alignments and directions, relating the gaze to a memory, journey or destiny.

Pedro Calapez was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1953, where he currently lives and works. He has been exhibiting widely national and internationally since the 1980s. His work has been shown in many important museums and galleries: "Field of shadows," Pilar i Joan Miró Foundation, Majorca (1997); "Madre Agua," MEIAC - Contemporary Art Museum, Badajoz and CAAC - Andalucia Contemporary Art Centre (2002); CGAC - Galicia Contemporary Art Centre, Santiago de Compostela (2005); "Painting places," CAB - Caja Burgos Art Centre, Burgos (2005). “White and neutral clarity,” Casa da Cerca, Centro de Arte Contemporânea, Almada (2009); “Kickflip,” PLMJ Foundation, Lisbon (2011); "dark skies", Casa das Histórias, Paula Rego House for Contemporary Art, Cascais (2012); “There is only drawing," Luis Seoane Foundation, La Coruña, Galicia (2013); Serralves Museum, OPorto (2009); “It’s not my fault,” Berardo Museum, Lisbon (2010); “The Collection,” Barrié Foundation, A Coruña (2011); “under the sign of Amadeo,” CAM- Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisboa (2013); "93," CGAC–Galician Centre for Contemporary Art, Santiago de Compostela; Venice Bienniale (1986); Sao Paulo Biennale (1987 and 1991), among others.

Calapez’s work is in the collections of: Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Lisboa; Centro de Arte Caja Burgos, Burgos; Central European Bank, Frankfurt; Chase Bank, New York; European Investment Bank, Luxembourg; Coca-Cola Foundation Spain, Madrid; Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation, Majorca; EDP Foundation, Lisbon; PLM Foundation, Lisbon; Portugal Telecom Foundation, Lisbon; MEIAC, Ibero; Reina Sofia Contemporary Art Museum, Madrid; Serralves Museum, Oporto, among others.