Pedro (france)

video series

 

articule showcases one video a month from October to June

 

“Just a few glimpses of a star at home” – this is a pithy description that sums up a series of videos by Pedro in which an anonymous person alone - or almost - constructs a universe from intimate, everyday moments that oscillate between pathetic kitch and brilliance. These videos question the human condition from a teleological perspective: the narcissistic need to make your mark, the essential yet futile need to make work, and the degree of derision appropriate to the creation.

 

Using multiple videos, this series examines human nature by publicly ridiculing apparent individuality (or rather a number of individualities, apropos of Alberto Giacometti’s “one unique to infinity”). Paradoxically offering up an exposed intimacy and imposing a certain distance through pathos and humour, the videos attempt to treat “noble” subjects in a colloquial way. The videos counter an ultra-technical era that privileges uniformity and immediacy in economic and social transactions. Uniformity and immediacy act as the natural supports of an ultra-liberal doctrine so that, ironically, any roughness is smoothed down and small, faint sparks of brilliance extinguished: the predictable produced from the “everyday” of every day - the prefabricated, pre-wrapped and ready-made. Maybe the closeness of this “star at home” allows him to let his guard down. The transformation of such small banal moments into ridiculous gems exposes the pathetic nature of recognition, perhaps even of fame.

 

 

Born in France in 1973 of Portuguese descent, Pedro has dual nationality. He was raised in a modest social milieu, in social housing far from the countryside, and thinks this may have influenced his interest in artificial gardens, popular subjects, and intimate videos of everyday life. Interested in learning, he has studied the sciences, the human sciences, construction, and art, and he combines all of these in his artistic practice. Over the last decade Pedro has exhibited in numerous contemporary art spaces and in the largest experimental video festivals in the world. He has always worked in multimedia, combining video, sculpture, photography, and sound, as he considers a work of art to be a complete perceptual entity.

 

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