ROOM 10
Armoured Room
A childhood memory, a
theatre of unusual characters,
a fiction about the life and
death of objects.
Quarto Blindado (Armoured Room) by
Fernão Cruz, is a space of infinite creation. As in origin myths, where the gods
are skilled sculptors, shaping the lives
of all beings and things in the world,
in this room the artist (b. Lisbon, 1995)
addresses the act of creation. Inspired by
the materials, textures and colours of the
African sculptures held in the museum’s
collection, and by F. D. Bedford’s illustrations for the book Peter and Wendy (1911), by the British writer J. M. Barrie,
Fernão Cruz builds an installation that
has different layers of meaning.
The adventures of the boy who did not
want to grow up are the pretext for
building a psychological and intimate
space, in which reality, suspended by
art, sees its rules subverted. The use of
papier maché - which José de Guimarães uses in many of his works – makes
it possible, with limited resources, to
reproduce objects without a function,
to build a fragile and yet tangible space
of dreams and desires, that the visitor invades and contemplates.
The sculptures that populate the room include a petrified umbrella, a broken
surveillance camera, a bird, a family
scene and a magical arm that seems to
invade the real world. Made of raw cloth
and exhibited like the pages of a book,
F. D. Bedford’s engravings are altered by
Fernão Cruz. A place of refuge is created through the domestic universe and
sense of intimacy, Peter Pan’s capacity to fly without wings, the feelings of
loss, mourning and desire, in a reality in
which intimate things loom large with
floating heavy bodies.
FOR ALL AGES
Fernão Cruz was born in 1995,
in Lisbon. After completing his
BA Hons degree in Painting at
FBAUL, he studied in Barcelona,
at the Facultat de Belles Arts,
Universitat de Barcelona. He
won the “Prémio Nacional Arte
Jovem 2017”, Carpe Diem Arte e
Pesquisa / Fundação Millenium
BCP. His solo exhibitions and
participating in group exhibitions include “Long Story Short” (2018) and “The White Goodbye:
what enters through the eyes
and leaves through the hands” (2019), both held at the Balcony
Gallery, Lisbon, and "Bring a
friend to The End" at the SADE
Gallery, in Los Angeles (2020).
In 2021 he will present a solo
exhibition at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon).
FOR ALL AGES
Fernão Cruz was born in 1995,
in Lisbon. After completing his
BA Hons degree in Painting at
FBAUL, he studied in Barcelona,
at the Facultat de Belles Arts,
Universitat de Barcelona. He
won the “Prémio Nacional Arte
Jovem 2017”, Carpe Diem Arte e
Pesquisa / Fundação Millenium
BCP. His solo exhibitions and
participating in group exhibitions include “Long Story Short” (2018) and “The White Goodbye:
what enters through the eyes
and leaves through the hands” (2019), both held at the Balcony
Gallery, Lisbon, and "Bring a
friend to The End" at the SADE
Gallery, in Los Angeles (2020).
In 2021 he will present a solo
exhibition at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon).
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