A Conversation between Nick Serota (in Cornwall) and Pedro Cabrita Reis (in Lisbon), on February 28th, 2022 

Nick Serota:
Pedro, let us begin with the origin of Field in San Fantin, from whom did the commission come and when?

Pedro Cabrita Reis:
Last summer, Justus Kewenig said “Why don’t we do another project together in Venice?” Back in 2013 I made A Remote Whisper at the Palazzo Falier. For some time, I’ve been thinking about returning there to do something. I like to go back to Venice now and then. By chance or perhaps not, I’ve been at the Biennale almost every ten years or so. I was there in ’95, then ’97, after that in 2003, both in the Portuguese Pavilion and in the Giardini when I was invited by Francesco Bonami, then in 2013, and now this year. So, after the “provocation” from Justus, I started doing drawings about an idea which at the time was still a bit blurred, floating in my mind, but that rather quickly became Field, even if in some kind of a raw form. That’s when I invited Michael Short, a friend who is an American curator and writer living in Berlin. I met him some years ago, we’ve had great conversations, he brought to me poets such as Muldoon, Seidel, Sexton, and it became clear for me that Michael had to be part of this new Venetian journey. So, one day we went to Venice to explore possible spaces to install Field which, by then, had already developed in my mind and in my notebooks. In Venice we met with don Gianmatteo Caputo, from the Curia Patriarcale di Venezia, who listened carefully to my ideas about Field. We engaged in a very good conversation around some of the philosophical aspects of Field, both the concept and the form. Then we made a visit to the Chiesa di San Fantin, following don Gianmatteo Caputo’s suggestion, and from that moment I fell in love and knew that this would be the place for Field. So I went on drawing, exchanging letters, plans, ideas with Michael. 

NS:
So, when you are making an installation, do you usually already have an idea in your head and are looking for a suitable place to make this installation, or does it come the other way round, do you start with a place and then develop an idea as a response?  

PCR:
In my mind there are always a lot of projects, sculptures, paintings, etc., I want to do and eventually will do, when the right moment comes. Sometimes I’m challenged by the subjective character of a particular space. This could happen in a garden, a factory, a church or just in the studio, but I never constrain myself, never have just one line of thinking or a single direction in my practice. I’ve always done what I wanted to do, whether it be figurative charcoal drawings, or self-portraits in the afternoon and landscape paintings from memory working through the night, followed by work on a public commission the next day. The mind is the real studio, the atelier is a mental space where a lot of different works are waiting to be actually realized since, in fact, they are already done. In your question you refer to “installation”. That’s a word I’ve banned from my vocabulary since 2009. In fact, what I do are large scale sculptures, to be displayed indoors or outdoors. The concept of installation has become unproductive for me since 2009 when I made a large exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle at the invitation of the then chief curator, Sabrina van der Ley. In the catalogue of the exhibition there were no longer any references to installation. Most so-called “installations” are no more than just interior decoration. I know I’ll be crucified by saying this. But, coming back, I really don’t have, never had, just a single line of work, how could I? I have a lot of works waiting in line in my mental studio. Sometimes they emerge into the light, some other times it’s the place that I see that triggers an action and the project.

NS:
I think it’s interesting that you abandoned the use of the word “installation” to describe what has now become a conventional practice in making sculpture “in situ”. I used it in my question, but your response reminds me that you are someone who breaks the conventions of sculpture, and you also break the conventions of artistic discourse. But when you work in a historic site, like San Fantin, what do you take from that site? How is the original idea fulfilled and is the idea modified when you come into a particular place? 

PCR:
In fact, the idea was not modified when I saw San Fantin. Field was pretty much “finished” by then. When I saw that church, what I had was a strong, clear and precise sensation that the space was mine, that it had been there waiting for my sculpture. Why? I don’t have any explanation, logical or other. Could it be any other church? Probably, who knows? But, in that moment at San Fantin, we became one: me, the work, the place. The time of the magnificent church commissions is long gone. Even if it was not a commission by the church, the Tintorettos at the Scuola San Rocco bring to our present time a history of the complex relations between artists and commissioners. More than just following the mere terms of the commission, the Tintorettos, especially the larger painting upstairs in the refectory, lead us beyond the predictable ordered celebration of the passion of Christ. I feel it more as a large “cinematic” single take or a “fresco” depicting a tense but chaotic scene in which fear, horror, sadness and perplexity are interwoven. In this sense the painting is some kind of a political statement as I also believe is Field. There is a permanent struggle between darkness and light. However, no matter how heavy and gloomy darkness may be, eventually, light will always overcome. For a long time I have wanted to make an intervention in the space of a church, or a small chapel. The opportunity was given to me, and I took it. I am not conditioned by the physicality of the space, instead I’m willing to confront it, to take everything I can from the memories, associations and signals of such a place, and replace it by what I want it to be, a place to celebrate, no longer any given religion but the presence of the human, as in the Tintoretto crucifixion in Scuola Grande. And I do it in a very simple manner with a simple work, which suggests a group of ideas in a place between philosophy and history, but which goes well beyond darkness and light, or the struggle between perfection and horror, to express a desire to overcome limits, which is the nature of humankind. A church is as good as any other place, for that.       

NS:
You talk about this exploration of opposites, these polarities between light and dark, rigid and flexible, serenity and, what you call “unquietness” in the short text which introduces this work. Has this kind of dialectical thinking always been a feature of your philosophical outlook and your philosophical roots? 

PCR:
Dialectics have always been present as a form for understanding the many realities which shaped my life and personal experiences. Anyway, dialectics do not have anything to do with duality which, in fact, is a rather useless concept. For me, as in Field, the relation, not the opposition, between light and darkness is about dialectics, never about duality.

NS:
But we are all creatures of our time, and your formation took place in the nineteen seventies and early eighties…

PCR:
Yes.

NS:
When a focus on the dialectic was a feature of thinking in that period…

PCR:
Indeed, especially if we consider the very important years of formation of personality corresponding to late adolescence. I was 17 years old in 1974, the Revolution year, and I was formed within somehow a vague Marxist ambience, when Portugal suddenly had this political change from the dictatorship into democracy. It was only later, in the mid/late nineties that this paradigm of a dialectical perception moved on to postmodernism, which brought the idea of everything being levelled, being equal to everything else, everything has the same value. Everything is grey. This was not at all the political perspective in my formation years. So, what am I? A leftover, a remnant of a time past when this was the way we analysed life. However, I don’t see the condition of dialectic in Field as obsolete. At the end of the day, after all possibilities and options, what seems to remain is more like a black and white statement rather than a huge and blurred palette of nuances of grey.

NS:
But to me this is one of the strengths of your work. I’m not just talking about Field, I’m talking about the interventions you make more generally. There is very clear structure beneath the form of the work. I’m sure this is intuitive, giving the work coherence and strength as an intervention in the world. When I look back at your work the threads that run through are connected by this way of thinking, this principle of dialectics. 

PCR:
Those threads are the tributaries of a river, and the sound of that river flowing is what I am. It is a way of seeing and acting as an artist, refusing to use whatever is not necessary in order to achieve a possible form of perfection in the work, whether it be a drawing or a sculpture. And I know when I get there, it’s intuitive and it doesn’t come from a conscious reflection. I just know. It’s a process of depriving, until the point where the work is really nothing but an inner and pure silence, a perfect object which doesn’t include any interpretation beyond the meaning I’ve cast on it. It must be so intense and so clear in its refusal to be interpreted that ideally every person would see it the same way. Impossible of course… My body knows before my mind when the work gets to this point, when its finished. It’s like being under some kind of spell, a sensation of absolute fullness, a brief moment when everything seems to come to a halt, a suspension of time. 

NS:
So, what is the meaning of the word “field”, for you? What are the associations of the word for you?

PCR:
The field… I can imagine the magnificence of a flat zone, I’m not a person that likes mountains. I like the sea, most of all, and I like the desert. So, a field is a flat, endless place, a horizontal territory, a horizontal line which together with the vertical line, the human presence, is in fact the ultimate symbol of the universe. You have the horizontal line, and you have in the middle a small, tiny vertical line that comes to meet the horizon and that is the ultimate symbol of us, the universe and whatever is real and will be real forever. So, a field is the place I’m in, is the place where I walk, is the place where I find the dimension that gives me back the notion of the reality around me. It’s not the trees, it’s not the river, it’s not the stones or the clouds. It is this huge infinite flatness where I walk and as I walk, I look around and there is nothing else… That’s exactly the place for humanity. As you may have seen in my sketches, I have approached this idea in many other works, this kind of horizontality with no limits, where we just have to imagine the presence of the human. So, this field is the field that I walk in, and as I walk I perceive the struggle between, as I said before, light and darkness. I walk upon that field as a hero would walk in a Greek tragedy or like Sigmund in a Wagner opera.

NS:
Field comes after a long series of works that explore similar concepts, beginning with True Gardens no. 1 in 2000.

True Gardens #1 (Crestet), 2000
Wood structure and enamel on mirrors
9 elements (694 x 570 x 30 cm)
Collection: The Artist, Photo: Hervé Abbadie

PCR:
The first True Gardens I made was in the south of France, in a former artist’s studio, transformed into an exhibition space. I could see that the best room was the interior patio with the whole sky above and that the best solution would be to bring the sky down to earth. That’s why I used mirrors. Mirrors can be complicated, but for me, at the time, I thought it was the best form. I could use the mirror to unite the up there and the down here, a condition that is also present in my Field for Venice. The up and down were brought together in the reflection of the mirrors. So, it was actually a real garden, but the true garden was not the natural garden. Gardens are an old human utopia, the ever-present problem of Eden, it goes back to the endless ambition of humankind to master nature. A garden is a revelation of the impossible dream of eternity. In that first True Gardens in France, one could at least see the clouds passing by in the mirror. I was already happy with that.  

NS:
You have made other works that you have titled True Gardens, but they do not use mirrors. They usually involve fluorescent or LED lights and often glass and snaking electric cables. They have a different form from this original one which was a courtyard garden. 

PCR:
Yes, the initial one was the most realistic and the most humble and, let’s say, the most naïve. I felt very proud of finding that title because by positioning the word “true” before “garden”, I chose an adjective that qualifies the garden. The real gardens are not true, the real true garden is the one which is fabricated. I did some other True Gardens because I started from the concept of a title which I found was very productive and very rich and which would allow me to develop and deepen what I had started in France with those mirrors. They all have in common this flatness, this horizontality, and this sort of melancholia of impossibility, with lights that don’t function, glass which is painted and doesn’t let us see what is behind, construction-like frames which are joined together and create a surface. Perhaps the best part of these works is the title, I don’t know.       

NS:
I have seen some of them and I found them compelling in their occupation of space, which is why I was interested to see you taking the idea to another level in developing Field. In Field you plan to elevate the glass panels in frames above the floor on little structures, which I think you relate to the Venetian passerelle that form temporary paths above the water during the acqua alta.  

PCR:
Absolutely! Roughly speaking I call them “tables”, to make the idea easier to understand. Tables have been rather present in other moments of my trajectory. These particular “tables” were born after I saw a pile of those passerelle that are deployed when acqua alta is in town. They have a very simple form, which is close to a very beautiful, poetical conception of what is a table. A table can be a bed and an altar at the same time, but joined together tables can also form a path that allows you to walk over water, which is also an old ambition of mankind. So, I thought, I have to do my Field using these objects so familiar in Venice and I will make them with different heights because with different heights you introduce another layer of complexity in the work. It’s not just one long consistent level of flatness, it’s a horizontality which is no longer flat. It vibrates, it goes up and down in a subtle way, but the platform is always elevated above the ground. So, this surface is suspended in air as in baroque paintings where clouds seem suspended with angels above and demons below. 

NS:
But in Field you have these tables with bright lights below, throwing their light through the glass and then you scatter debris of terracotta brick, rubble and masonry across the surface. What is the significance of this disruption and why do you work with construction materials in this way?  

PCR:
Well, construction materials have been very much familiar to my process, I have used brick many, many times before and I shall keep on using it. One thing which I should stress is nothing in my life is ever finished. I keep coming back and then going forward again. Nothing is ever ended. The act of construction is very present across all my work, and I thought that it would be interesting to look at it once again. I’ve done a few sculptures using clay bricks and in Field I want to have them destroyed through demolition or some act of violence. This debris, this destruction, this evil, chaos, this darkness, is a starting point for a political debate about the destruction of cities, destruction of houses, the mere idea of the destruction of a previously built thing. Humankind builds houses as a place to live in and their destruction implies the notion of violence, horror, and terror. It is not just a religious or philosophical debate about evil and good, or about light and darkness. The debris which comes from destruction has, for me, an inherent concept of horror, brutality and tragedy and fulfils the political note that I want to include in my work. Nowadays, everybody seems to claim to have a politically orientated art practice. Most of the time such declarations appear superficial, more of the same political correctness. We don’t need to wait for such politically correct champions. I continue to consider politics as a form of philosophy, in the sense that it implies the discussions of ideas, a difference of opinion. In my work politics comes as a form of discussion and an expression of humanity. The word, the language, the violence of politics bring us to chaos, a chaos that is confronted with the eternal resonance of purity, of light, of survival, of believing in happiness, in beauty. In my view, this is the best way to introduce the political perspective in the work. Stapling a red flag on a canvas or hanging a photo of a black person being assassinated by a police officer is far from a real political intervention. Artists must create much deeper resonant work, transforming and proposing different perspectives on everyday life. We have to go further. People will find politics in it.

NS:
Yes, when I experience your works I have a visceral sense of this violence, destruction, chaos, improvisation, all the adjustments and accommodations that individuals have to make to their lives. Before we conclude, I want to ask you about Venice. When we spoke earlier about light and dark, it seemed very relevant to the physical experience of Venice, the way the sun strikes the white stone buildings and illuminates the piazzas and then you enter the shadows of the narrow street or alley. But you have also talked about Scuola di San Rocco and how Tintoretto uses light and dark in his work. You mentioned at the beginning of this conversation that Justus Kewenig had reminded you that you like to come back to Venice every decade. What is about Venice that attracts you?  

PCR:
Well, Venice is more than a city, it’s a state of mind, built upon variations of a golden sunset light, or the vibrations of the water surface, the silence in the back alleys. It’s not merely about the romantic history of the Venice we all know, the many famous artists, musicians, writers, who lived or even sometimes died there. But I believe they all were attracted by this evanescent quality. It doesn’t go anywhere, it doesn’t change. It is like churches in the Middle Ages, holy places where enemies could congregate and not kill each other, where people could take refuge if pursued by the forces of order or power. Venice is a civitas model for a possibility of perfection and eternity in the sense that there is no time in Venice. Time doesn’t exist because you cannot go anywhere, you just keep moving around and inside this particular place. It is in fact a mental island and it seems that everyone you meet is somehow part of yourself and that you end up feeling you have met this person somewhere else in another moment of your life. Magic is perhaps a banal word, but I’d rather prefer to say there is a strangeness about this city, something composed of rumours, half lies, mysteries. The paintings in churches and in palazzos seem to have been there forever, or they just might have been done yesterday. It’s a place for tolerance. Disappearing… you can disappear in Venice. I like that. Walking around, you move and it seems that you never get tired. You keep walking as your feet guide you. You are free of a destination, no place to go, just to walk and let your body wander. And your mind wanders as well. That’s maybe why I like to go there. At least every ten years…

NS:
I like the image of you walking through Venice with your sketch book, making notes and recording, not exactly what you see but impact of what you see on your own mind and being.

PCR:
Everything is already there, inside you, not what is outside. One looks around, listening to all kinds of sounds, the water on the Grand Canal, the birds in the trees. Be it vague or abstract it’s in your mind, all these things come into you. A painting doesn’t come from the outside onto the canvas, it comes from inside of yourself onto the canvas. Reality is definitely more real when expressed or materialized in a drawing, a sculpture, a painting, a poem. Venice is more itself when it becomes a drawing. So, the mind functions as a filter to get rid of the banality of what seems to be real and find a true essence. 

NS:
Your reference to “the canvas” reminds me that, although you are probably best known for the sculpture and interventions that you make in three dimensions, you still regard yourself as a painter, even if there is no hierarchy in your mind.

PCR:
Yes, I am a painter. I have been always looking at myself as a painter, and if one takes a deeper look at my works, the great majority of them, either hanging on the walls or occupying the floor of a church in Venice, are engaged with the eternal questions of painting. It just keeps coming back. I think as a painter, I feel as a painter, I look around as a painter. My three-dimensional works are there because I am a painter. Les Trois Grâces, a sculpture which I’ve just done for the Louvre, brought me again to the unavoidable question of the human body. In sculpture, definitely in painting, in drawing as well. This sculpture is generating a new series of work, focused on the human body. We know it, the human body is the measure of everything. Even Field, a sculpture with its debris, lights and neon is still a measurement of space, only possible in reference to the human body. In fact, those tables lie on the floor of the church like tombs… they have my height… are my size…

Les Trois Grâces, 2022
Acrylic paint on cork, cor-ten steel
460 x 150 x 150 cm
Collection: The Artist, Photo: Juan Rodriguez

NS:
I had assumed that they were related in some way to your own body or something very close, like a bed.

PCR:
Yes, it’s a bit less than my height. When one gets old the body shrinks, so I’m already preparing myself to be not as tall as I used to be. I usually take measures for my three-dimensional sculptures starting from the body. The hand, the arm, a palm, the arms spread wide….

The Ground, 2002
Steel, wooden doors, fluorescent lights, electric cables
Site specific (variable dimensions)
Collection: The Artist, Photo: PCRSTUDIO / Tânia Simões

NS:
But they’re not coffins… 

PCR:
Well, they already have debris, on top. I don’t say anything further, but many years ago I made a related piece, called The Ground at Baltic in Gateshead, it was based on a beautiful painting by Fra Angelico where there are lots of tombs and where the slabs on the top of the tombs were removed.

Fra Angelico
The Last Judgement, c. 1425 – 1430
(detail of the broken tombs)
Tempera on panel
Museo di San Marco, Florence

NS:
So, as you have said, over the decades you work backwards and forwards across your given territory. Field is the latest expression of your thinking in a place that has a given physical character overlaid with the sounds and echoes of the Christian ritual. However, it is also significant that you have chosen a church located not anywhere but rather in Venice, a city that holds so many memories for you.