Alexandre Estrela

Alexandre Estrela: RedSkyFalls is an installation that responds in real time to Earth's internal rumblings – an artificial ecosystem with pre-digital sensibility. In RedSkyFalls, the mountainous landscape of a computer desktop serves as a habitat for aquatic plants and small luminous organisms with an animal intuition, the Réplicas, nestled inside the grooves of aluminium plates. Alexandre Estrela: RedSkyFalls is on view at the Portugal Pavilion of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia and is curated by Ana Baliza and Ricardo Nicolau.

Built from a calibrated mix of animal parts drawn from a dark cauldron, each Réplica borrows its vital pulse from the beat of a heart in a fly's leg, the wave of a fish larva's tail, and the quiver of a rat's whisker. This patchwork of movement engraves onto the metal plate a linear fossil, a path where light generates a figure that continuously fulfills its hollow-graphic fate.

Redcat hosts a reproduction of one of the Réplicas of RedSkyFalls. In Los Angeles, as in Venice, the piece reacts to live seismic activity worldwide. Other Réplicas will be installed in San Francisco, California (CCA Wattis Institute); Lima, Peru (Museo de Arte de Lima, MALI); and Lisbon, Portugal (Galeria Zé dos Bois). The piece is installed in highly seismic geographies, where it responds to tectonic events with higher synchronicity, building an extended relational infrastructure.

Alexandre Estrela is an artist whose work explores the perception of still and moving images through the manipulation of objects and projections, in search of a poetic language. Recent solo exhibitions include A Natureza Aborrece o Monstro, Culturgest, Lisbon (2024); Flat Bells, MoMA, New York (2023); All and Everything, Museo Rufino Tamayo (2020); Roda Lume, MuHKA, Antwerp (2016); Pockets of Silence, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (2015); and Meio Concreto, Serralves Museum, Porto (2013). The artist is represented by Galería Travesía Cuatro (Madrid, CDMX, GDL).