José Pedro Croft

Made of iron, glass, and mirror, the six, monumental sculptures by José Pedro Croft (*1957 in Porto) establish a direct dialogue between the architecture and the landscape of Venice, a city defined by the ever changing color and light of its sky which results from the movement of the surrounding bodies of water. Croft’s work establishes an intense, visual game with its environs and forces us to rethink the places, construction conditions, and reception of the works while questioning ideas about private and public architectural spaces. Croft is one of the most outstanding and internationally-known Portuguese sculptors working today. He belongs to the highly active generation of artists from the 1980s that brought Portuguese art into the contemporary sphere. With this work, Croft establishes both a direct and indirect dialogue with Álvaro Siza, Portugal’s official representative of the 2016 Venice Biennial for Architecture, who, in neighboring locations such as the nearby island of Giudecca, is now concluding a social housing project that had previously been on hold for a decade.