Gabriel Abrantes

Gabriel Abrantes (USA, 1984) lives and works in New York and Lisbon. His work has been shown at the Salzburger Kunstverein (Salzburg), MAAT (Lisbon), Tate Britain (London), Tate Modern (London), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), MIT List Visual Arts Center (Boston), Museu Serralves (Porto), Kunst-Werke (Berlin), ICA (London), Lincoln Centre (NY), Caixa Forum (Madrid), CAM - Gulbenkian (Lisbon), amongst others.

His films premiered in competition at the Venice Biennale, the Berlinale and Locarno International Film Festival, where he won the Golden Leopard for “A History of Mutual Respect” (2010). Most re ...

Abrantes’ work often focuses on questions relating to politics, art history, artificial intelligence, and post-net ontologies. As his work reflects on specific themes, it also considers how these subjects intersect with modes of representation in popular culture, namely in the aesthetics of Hollywood cinema.

His new series of paintings’ focus on similar themes, bringing together digital technologies used in visual effects heavy films and art historical references. He intersects the use of this visual effects’ technology, and reference to Hollywood cinema, with a reflection on art ...

Gabriel Abrantes: Melancolia Programada

Gabriel Abrantes exhibition at the MAAT, Melancolia Programada, opened on 12 February, before the Covid-19 pandemic. Featuring both the artist’s earliest and most recent films, alongside a new VR commission and a suite — his first in 12 years — of paintings, the show offered a physical and psychic immersion into Abrantes’ cinematic universe. It’s a universe that plays fast and loose with familiar narrative devices and socio-political realities, colliding both to imagineer seductive, critical reveries through the ensuing explo ...