Rui Chafes

Rui Chafes was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1966. Between 1984 and 1989 he studied Sculpture at the School of Fine Arts of Lisbon and after completing the course he traveled to Germany, where he attended Gerhard Merz’s class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf [Düsseldorf Art Academy] from 1991 to 1992. After some first ephemeral installations with fragile materials such as wood, reeds or plastics, namely in his first solo exhibition in 1986 (Pássaro Escondido, at Galeria Leo in Lisbon), around 1987 Rui Chafes began using what would become the only material he now works with: iron painted black. The ambiguity between matter and form given by the iron worked in apparently light and organic forms is one of the main and most distinctive features of his work. However, the work of Rui Chafes has yet other constants, such as the relevance of the titles he gives his works and the place and context in which he creates them, as well as the relationship of his works with nature.