Edgar Pires was born in Oeiras in 1982 and graduated in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon in 2007. His artistic practice evokes the experience of being stimulated by the careful observation of everyday life and consists in big part on the research and experimentation with materials in the multidisciplinary territory of sculpture/installation.
Stand outs in his trajectory are the solo exhibitions Incolor, Sala do Veado in Lisbon (2013), Luz, Espaço e Ações, Sala Bebé / Espaço Avenida, in Lisbon (2012), (Re)ação, Lagar do Azeite, in Oeiras. (2009); the group exhibitions, Superfície/Obstáculo, with Nuno Rodrigues de Sousa, Residência COOP, in Lisbon (2013), Entre Muros – Junho das Artes, in Óbidos (2010) and he was a resident artist at Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa (2013/14); awards, (2009) Honorable Mention - Young Creators Aveiro 09 – Sculpture category, (2006) first place (ex-aequo) with the Marquês de Pombal Foundation Award – Plastic Arts/Contemporary Art – Young Artists, in 2006.
(...) The title of the exhibition suggests an alchemical process, an almost magical transformation of the material the artist works with. Pires spends months creating the forms we can see at the bottom of the gallery stairs. He uses projections of hot iron to create these pieces, projecting them onto glass or molding them into classical shapes. Here we see a long cylinder lying on the gallery floor, there a sphere. A kind of cushion offers a version of a rectangular prism with softer corners, and we see a slightly worn cube but, unlike the pillow-shaped parallelepiped, this one retains all its sharp corners. Initially, these objects appear as corroded remnants that could have been found on any abandoned, rusted ship. A kind of industrial wreckage, perhaps parts of a larger machine that broke down some time ago and was abandoned when it was no longer useful. Despite their heavy appearance and irregular surfaces, these sculptures are exactly that: sculptures. Created by marinating iron filings in a mixture of kosher salt and vinegar inside molds, Pires made these objects from scratch. It took quite some time for these to "take shape," but they are studio objects nonetheless, not the product of a land art experiment. Pires meticulously creates these pieces in his studio, fabricating the corrosion that produces the abrasive surfaces. He works some brighter spots in an intersection between science and design (apparently taking longer to achieve that result), and molds them as he pleases.
