An Urban Silence

About

Portuguese artists use photography, video and painting to focus on urban spaces. Each artist has taken a perspective of cities without citizens. The megacities of Mexico City, Mumbai and Hong Kong are so vast that the scale of individual lives is barely conceivable. Reflections of ultra modern hotel rooms, with only a trace of a figure, are superimposed over the neon city night outside. Decadent, modernist buildings are depicted as disconcertingly abandoned. Solitary protagonists disrupt derelict spaces and perform personal battles against a landscape of wastelands. These works, with awe and humour, address a disquiet of urban inhabitation. The simplicity of the artists' observations of the housing projects and tragicomic interventions belie the complexity of man's place in his made world. These concerns are not all specific to Lisbon and Porto, but universal and, as our cities multiply, increasingly familiar. Curated by Blair Todd, An Urban Silence includes Nuno Cera, Mauro Cerqueira, Gil Heitor Cortesà £o and Joà £o Tabarra.