//ClaudioReis
/
Cláudio Reis (b. in 1980). Currently based in Vila do Conde, Portugal. After an architecture background between Porto, Portugal, and Lausanne, Switzerland, a growing interest in constructing images made him follow Alice through the looking glass. In 2014 he obtained a Master of Arts in Photography, with Distinction, at the School of Arts, Catholic University of Portugal. Since 2015 the pursuit of his artistic practice has been made in tandem to a PhD research in Digital Media, under a collaborative framework established between the University of Porto and the University of Texas, Austin, USA.
"Building Nature"
Often considered in terms of its aesthetic appeal, I believe a landscape is foremost a visual escape. Throughout “building nature” I propose the reevaluation of nature and landscape as a human desire, engaging reality and fiction by exploring a space of encounter between opposites. As an expression, “building nature” evokes two complementary readings: to build nature (an utopia), and the nature of building (the act itself). By moving within this frame, nature and landscape are to be understood as cultural constructions, critically addressing the natural/artificial paradigm inherent to the human condition and the ongoing Anthropocene. In each image the simulacrum of nature is undertaken as a symbolic act of displacement, researching a speculative balance between design and indeterminacy, preconceptions and reconceptions, drawing improbable conditions as if envisioning the paradox of constructing chance and the becoming of things.
