Central Tejo

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“Central Tejo” by Pedro Cabrita Reis, 2018
Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia
Avenida Brasília, Belém
Lisbon, April 2019

“The EDP Foundation commissioned the artist Pedro Cabrita Reis to produce the sculpture Central Tejo, which was completed in June 2018. A couple of possible locations were presented to him, but Cabrita Reis already knew exactly where he wanted to install the piece: at a pier on the Tejo in front of the old power station, where the barges which supplied coal to the energy factory would moor before the latter was turned into a museum. ‘It’s a historical place. Any artwork created there would immediately become part of the city’s history.’ To achieve the delicate balance between monumentality and lightness, Cabrita Reis used two of his favourite materials — aluminum tubes and fluorescent lights. A common denominator of most of his work since the mid 2000s, aluminium and neon lights are the basis of some of his most well-known pieces, such as the installation A Remote Whisper, presented at the Venice Biennale in 2013. ‘I work with everyday materials, which are easily recognisable’, he explains. ‘People see simple aluminum tubes and fluorescent lights which are identical to the ones they have at home and are disarmed.’ The configuration of the piece also had to be simple. ‘Simplicity,’ the artist stresses, ‘is always the objective’.” (Pedro Cabrita Reis — Central Tejo, 2018, MAAT)